


Mortal Paradigm

by Wally_1931



Category: K-pop, NCT (Band)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Based On Buzzfeed Unsolved, Behind the Scenes, Blood, DONT NEED TO BE AN UNSOLVED FAN TO READ, Demon!Lee Donghyuck, Demon/Human Relationships, Demonic Possession, Fluff, Ghost Hunter!Mark Lee, How Do I Tag, M/M, Mark and Johnny being best bros, No Smut, Slow Burn, Swearing, Violence, but it's MY mess, it's a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-07-12 01:33:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19937857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wally_1931/pseuds/Wally_1931
Summary: Mark Lee, just a college student looking to graduate, works undeniably hard at everything he sets his mind to.Includingghost hunting with his best friend. When a run in with a particularly mysterious demon sets his plans off kilter, they both come to learn exactly what it means to be human.OR the modernized Demon × Human AU prefaced by ghost hunting shenanigans that no one asked for





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 14/06/2020: Before you read, please consider taking some time out to support the Black Lives Matter movement. [Here](https://greedypablo1955.tumblr.com/post/620410655018778624/oberynmartell-list-of-black-lives-matter-and) is a masterlist of all the petitions and donation sites to help with the cause. Even if you can't donate, just reading, understanding, and sharing these people's stories can be all it takes. Additionally, you can access a plethora of information about the issue [here](https://greedypablo1955.tumblr.com/post/620411656595488768/black-lives-matter).
> 
> Chapter One is based on the Youtube series Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural. I just love Shane and Ryan’s bro dynamic so much and wondered if it would work with Johnny and Mark.
> 
> If you wanna get the gist of their dynamic I'd recommend giving this a watch. I was alternating between their episodes and NCT vids and this was what happened lol.
> 
> Preferences such as skeptisism or belief in the supernatural is discussed in this fic - please note that the beliefs or preferences characters have here (especially Johnny and Mark) are completely fabricated for the benefit of fiction. I do not know if either of them believe in ghosts and if the portrayal is wrong please bare with me.
> 
> Please, please (and I cannot stress this enough), **PLEASE** do not read this fic if you struggle with topics such as **_demonic possession, rape/non con, underrage sex or suicide_**. Only the possession part is depicted explicitly. The rape, suicide and underrage sex are all mentioned by a character as things that happened in their past and are **_not_** intended to be glorified or romanticized.
> 
> Additional trigger warnings will be placed at the start of relevant chapters.
> 
> This isnt my first fic but it IS my first posted one so pls be gentle with me. I’ve tried to edit as I go and it’s written on my phone so all the mistakes are my own and I apologize in advance.
> 
> Was gonna wait until I had actually finished all the chapters but I'm an impatient little shit
> 
> I’m so nervous to post this jshsjqjq okayyy enjoy the ride bye

“My Tennant will be on a short holiday from the 3rd to the 10th of this month,” the man's reply was grainy as it emitted from the phone's receiver.

_Roger that. It isn’t like I heard you the other three times._

With a domineering finality, he continued. “She has expressly stated she only wants her house open to you for one day. She wants this ‘ _nuisance_ ’ taken care of immediately. I will be at the property on the 3rd to open the house for you.”

_That's this Saturday. Talk about an emergency house call._

Mark swallows audibly before dampening his lips. The deadline was way sooner than expected. “Saturday it is then,” he says. “We will see you then Mr. Kang.”

The landlord grumbles his sendoff before the line goes dead. Mark let’s out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding as a familiar elation settles in the pit of his stomach. He taps on his most frequently dialed contact after cracking his knuckles.

You see, those kinds of calls have become a regular feat in Mark's short 19 years of life. After trying a hand in retail, motor mechanics and serving tables at various restaurants around his small neighborhood he had finally found something exciting to do with his time that pays well and works around his busy college schedule. While at first it was slow to start and experimental – barely enough to sustain his ever-present ramen addiction (don't judge him), it steadily grew more and more successful. From sleepless nights waiting for it to gain traction to a barrage of phone calls from various residents or landlords around the city.

When asked by friends, acquaintances or his grandma what he does for a living the answer is always the same.

He is Mark Lee: student and part-time ghost hunter.

“What did you break now?” His call is answered on the fourth ring by a sleepy voice.

Mark is too buzzed on excitement to roll his eyes. “Nothin'.” Comes his nonchalant reply. He decides to hold off the news for now and checks the neon numbers on his alarm clock. Afternoon light still seeping through his curtains. “Why are you sleeping right now dude? It's 3:30.”

The boy on the other end of the line lets out a giant yawn, there's a shuffling noise in the background that Mark can only assume is him stretching. “Just spent ten hours editing an extra credit assignment,” the boy mumbles and Mark makes a noise of ascent. While not mandatory and generally a pain in the ass, extra credit assignments are a gold mine if done properly – and Johnny Seo is not one to back down from an all-nighter.

Johnny, four years his senior, is Mark's best friend and partner in crime. The older majors in filmmaking while Mark majors in sound production. The two of them met when their courses joined together to produce a film for the end of semester showcase: a vapid and lifeless project but experience nonetheless. The pair instantly clicked and stayed in touch after the project was done. It should have been Johnny's final year of college but delays in the earlier years of his course have him bound there for at least one more. Hence why he is adamant about extra credit – he feels lucky to even still be in the filmmaking course.

A few months after their group assignment had finished – right when Mark had had his full of being shouted at by customers for putting too much sauce on their pizza base – he had approached Johnny with an idea.

The pair of them had gone to see the latest Poltergeist movie in cinema (throughout which Johnny couldn’t stop laughing and Mark had almost pissed himself a dozen times), the younger boy was inspired to ask the question. Eventually, the offhanded proposition of “ _Yo, what if we recorded ourselves going to haunted places and post them on the internet_?” had escalated into a whirlwind of recording, editing and travelling around to various creepy locations in their city.

Johnny’s deep voice broke Mark out of his reprieve, seeming to have gauged the younger's jittery energy through the phone. “Wanna tell me something, Mark?”

The younger's face split with a smile. “I got us another job.”

A groan. “When and where?”

“An old lady's apartment in the Baudee district,” Mark replied. “The building’s been there for centuries and apparently she’s reported some pretty strange shit. Our deadline visit is.. um… it's this Saturday.”

Mark rushes the final fragment of his last sentence. And in the pregnant pause that follows he can almost hear the eye roll from Johnny.

“That’s not a lot of time to research.”

Mark's stomach drops. Johnny has always been adamant on being thorough with a project - especially now that their content has gained traction. He has a keen natural talent for film composition but the more time spent laying the footwork of an investigation in the beginning means less editing work they have to do in post.

“I… I know but – I will get it done in time,” Johnny doesn’t doubt that Mark will get it done. While Johnny is no stranger to all-nighters, he knows that Mark has gone _weeks_ without rest. Spending days at a time in his apartment working on a composition or sound mixing for a monster hunter episode and winding up not being able to tell you the last time he saw the sun. It’s this self-destruction that Johnny hates more than remaining to a tight routine or schedule on a project – though, Mark fails to understand this.

The older let’s out a resigned sigh. “Just don't work yourself too hard.”

Mark hadn't listened.

In the few days that followed Mark had made so many rudimentary visits to the campus library that he was basically a resident there. He scoured the worn and dated pages of the city's history books looking for telltale signs that would typically explain a subsequent haunting in that area. Things such as public hangings, natural disasters, burials, séances, exorcisms, witchcraft, voodoo or generally any other reports of paranormal happenings in that district. The deeper Mark dug the more frustrated he became. Coming up empty searching through all the notable years when such things _usually_ occur. Finding nothing but a trivial family dispute over the custody of a pig.

He figured he could use the lack of a notable cause to their advantage. At the beginning of each episode he and Johnny usually break down the history of the area or even events specific to a house they are visiting. They find this entices the viewers who believe in spirits and also caters to those who don't believe at all. This time around though, they could use the lack of history in the area to create suspense and use it to debunk the tenant’s reports if they can’t catch anything on camera.

Saturday afternoon rolls around before Mark has time to breathe. Dressed in acid wash skinny jeans, matching denim jacket layered over a plain white shirt and his ‘ghost hunting boots’, the blonde haired boy locks the door to his apartment and takes the stairs. Afternoon light disappearing quickly over the horizon.

Despite having never found definitive proof of a ghost (as Johnny loves to constantly point out), Mark always feels inexplicably jittery before each episode shoot. Often a distraction from the exhaustion settling in his bones. This time is no exception. His stomach always feels like it’s about to fall out of his ass without a moment's hesitation and a tingling sensation dances along his fingertips. These symptoms seem to be amplified tonight. Every slight noise on the street has him jumping slightly, his lips are chapped from biting them so much and he almost bolts out of the carriage when someone sneezes on the subway.

Duffle bag slung over his shoulder, Mark rings the buzzer of Johnny's apartment complex. He applies a helping of chapstick into his lips as he ignores his brain subconsciously counting down the seconds. After a short while the door opens revealing a relatively fresh faced Johnny. His outfit today exudes a comfortable and homely vibe with white, wide legged trousers and a black sweater with a long dark grey t-shirt hem visibly peeking out under it.

“Ready to be proven wrong again?” Johnny baits sardonically.

“Got the camera this time?” Mark counters and bursts into laughter when the older pouts.

“That was one timeee,” he whines and Mark laughs louder. The banter clearing his head and calming his nerves. “C'mon let's get this over with.”

“Let's geddit!” Mark chirped, before leading the way. Something about the presence of the raven haired gentle giant allowing him to center himself as they make their way to the subway.

The thing that sets them apart from all the other debunking series on the internet is their dynamic on camera. Johnny is skeptical at best and downright patronizing at worst when it comes to the existence of supernatural beings. Both their budding friendship along with their opposing viewpoints add to their chemistry on-screen.

The suburb they are investigating within is a 15 minute ride on the subway from Johnny's apartment. Nobody batted an eye at the two bags full of recording equipment they each carried and they ran into no trouble on the way. They ended up getting to their required apartment building one and a half hours before the landlord was due to arrive. The sun having disappeared over the horizon.

The neighborhood was one of the more hilly places within the city, the streets slowly rising and falling like ocean waves. Despite the peaks and troughs, the inclined streets were lined with apartment buildings – some stretching three stories high. From the rooftops of those that are perched at the highest point of the hills you can see the city's harbor. Mellow ambient lighting is emitted from the yellowing bulbs of the dated streetlamps. All the buildings are decorated with bricks of varying color, creating a mottled array of patchwork down the street. Apartment block 2000 – the one Johnny and Mark were currently stood in front of – was a rich deep red brick with gunmetal grey embellishments. Mark didn’t want to be cliché, but it was arguably one of the more imposing buildings.

They managed to kill time by getting some establishing shots of the building and the streets surrounding. After a bit of trial and error they managed to set up the camera on the tripod and filmed their introduction portion of the episode – glad that they wouldn’t have to alternatively edit in a voice over for that part. It was slightly difficult only having themselves rather than a supporting film crew, but they made it work like they always do. Mark managed to recite his findings (or lack thereof) on the history of the suburb and apartment buildings – in his record least amount of takes so far (four). Finally they got to film where they recited the strange happenings within the tenant’s home.

For these segments, they each have a handheld camera that they film with. Johnny’s is on the end of a selfie stick and Mark's is bare so they can alternate between wide and close-up shots. They’re holding their respective devices as they walk down the darkened street towards the apartment building. The red façade creeping up from the shadows like a foreboding warning.

“So um,” Mark begins eloquently, looking down at the worn pavement and back up again. “Mr. Landlord told me that apparently the old lady who lives here has complained about some pretty crazy stuff.”

“How crazy are we talking, Mark?” Johnny interjects, eyes focused on framing the street and apartment perfectly.

“Well, _apparently_ she first started noticing the lights in her sitting room being turned on and off about three months ago. Like, she would leave the room having turned the light off and it would be back on when she came back in. She contacted the electrical company with a complaint and they checked all the wiring. No faults.

“She then just ignored it for a while until the next strange thing started happening. In her sitting room she has an old record player. She kept finding that records that weren’t even close to being damaged or old were skipping or stuttering without interference or stopping altogether. And sometimes when she left a particular record on the turntable, she would hear it playing music from her bedroom during the night without her turning it on. It wouldn’t skip or stutter then.”

Even just saying those words made a cold shiver run down Mark's spine. He looked over at Johnny who had a stupid smirk on his face. “What?” he questioned the older with a breathless laugh.

“I dunno Mark…” the raven haired boy drawled purposefully. He then held back a laugh and lowered his voice. “…all of these things kinda sound like an old lady's forgetfulness.” The elder covered his mouth as he said it as if he felt bad to be blaming it on the woman. Mark felt bad for laughing but the look on his hyung's face was hilarious.

Mark composed himself and stopped walking for dramatic effect. None of these bits were scripted – the pair of them usually opting to just go with the flow. Which usually means that Johnny hears the accounts for the first time like the viewer, so Mark likes to play up the theatrics.

“That's not even the craziest part,” he begins, tapping Johnny once on the shoulder as the taller stops and looks at him. “The night before she finally called the landlord with her official complaint, she was asleep in her bedroom when the record player turned on by itself again. She distinctly remember having _not_ left a record on the turntable that night. The record that was playing was one that never stuttered and had played during the night when she left it on the turntable. None of the others had done that. Anyway um.. . she was, like, _super_ fed up at this point and she went into the sitting room She ripped the needle off the vinyl and swapped out the record for another in the hopes it wouldn’t play again.

“As she was walking away from the record player, the record _jumped off_ , flew across the room and smashed into the wall. It landed amongst a pile of other newly smashed records. They were all enact when she had gone to bed.”

There was a pause. Mark's dark eyes were wide as he retold the story. The pair let the words hang in the air amidst the silence of the darkened street.

“So… this is a hipster ghost then?” Johnny had that stupid grin on his face again and Mark brought a hand to his face and sighed. They continued walking when Johnny spoke again. He raised a brow. “Just curious, which record was the one that played without a problem? The one that didn’t smash?”

Mark’s eyes widened once more and we felt his face go red. He looked down at the ground and mumbled. “Um.. Michael Jackson's uh.. Th-Thriller.”

Johnny’s snort and subsequent laughter echoed off the buildings onto the empty street. He doubled over and almost tripped due to his elation. He had just enough breath to gasp out “ _That's so cliché_!!”

And as much as Mark was loathe to admit it – as much as he wanted to be the first person the capture a ghoul on a recording – it _was_ super cliché. He felt almost stupid admitting it out loud and couldn’t help but question just how reliable this old woman must be. He really hoped this place was at least the slightest bit interesting – they both needed the money and wanted to remain diligent for their fan base.

“Laugh it up,” was all he could reply with the shake of his head as they mounted the front steps. A sleek black car rolled it’s way down the street and parked out front. The landlord, two minutes late. He shut his car door with a resounding slam throughout the street. Mark winced, _there goes that audio_.

They cut both their cameras and pocket them for now while they get the formalities out of the way. The landlord is as gruff and impersonal in real life as he is on the phone. While Mark and Johnny just about tower over him in height, the man is stout and wide with broad shoulders and imposing posture. He exudes a general ‘I hate my job' vibe. After the brief greetings are over with the smaller man pushes past the pair to jostle with the front door of the apartment. They take the (creaky) stairs to the uppermost level where the carpet is worn down the center of the corridor like the landlord's hairline. A chair lift was installed on each stairwell in the place of an elevator, Mark knew better than to ask the stout man if they could try it out.

They reach apartment number 66. Mark hears Johnny’s snicker behind him as the landlord produces a set of copper keys and opens the door. The balding man was panting from the ascent – Mark wonders idly if he should have suggested the chairlift.

“ _Don't_ break _anything_ ,” the man whips around after letting them through the threshold of the old lady's apartment, they’re stood in the kitchen. “Don't set fire to anything, don't go snooping around anywhere – _especially_ the closet. My client has expressly stated she does _not_ want any kids snooping around in her private belongings. Lock the door on your way out and I will be back tomorrow morning to check that everything is in it's place.”

“Except for the ghost, right?” Johnny muses. The landlord levels him with an unamused glare. The light-hearted smirk slowly dissolves from the gentle giant's face. But neither Mark nor the landlord notice the remaining mischievous glint in his honey brown eyes.

Without another word – but _not_ without another glare at the both of them – the landlord takes his leave from the apartment, leaving the pair of them in a bout of momentary silence. It’s in this silence that Mark's brain remembers where they are. Where _he_ is. These shoots are always so seemingly effortless for Johnny, who seems to never scare at anything less than the fashion disaster that is Mark's wardrobe occasionally. While the older is a self-proclaimed skeptic Mark has a more difficult time trying to comprehend the reports of paranormal activity. Usually he is a relatively rational guy – aside from the occasional lapse in logic. Yet something about these creepy locations makes him jittery and feel as though his stomach is made of lead. This location especially is making him feel all kinds of Scooby-Doo jeebies.

“Do you feel that, hyung?” he breaks the silence, voice wavering slightly. Johnny looks up slightly from where he was fixing the grip stick back onto the camera, knelt down on one knee on the dated linoleum. Mark pulls the sleeve of his jacket up, revealing the goosebumps and raised hairs that have infested the ridge of his forearm. He brings it forward. “I've got chills.”

“ _They're multiplyin_ ’,” Johnny sings softly. The carry of his voice echoing off the kitchen cabinets. He resumes fixing the camera. His singing gets progressively louder. “ _And I’m loooosing control!_ ” It slices through the building and Mark _knows_ they’ve pissed neighbors off already.

“ _Dude_! Shut _up_!” Mark whisper-shouts. “You'll scare the ghost away!!”

Johnny takes a breath from laughing. “Like you haven’t done that already with your face – ohhhh!!”

“Don't you remember this ghost only likes one song? It probably hates us already!!”

“Then the ghost is a dick.”

“ _Shh!!_ You’re being so fucking loud - and we aren't even filming!”

Johnny clicks his tongue. “Oh what? You think I’m gonna wake the ghost up with my beautiful singing?”

A sigh. “Set the camera up, dickhead.”

“Just call me Johnny Travolta.”

While filming, they always have the lights of a location dimmed or turned off completely. The apartment building being as old as it is, it only has an on or off setting. They counter the darkness using flashlights and Johnny turns on an old lamp in the corner of the living room. The warm yellow light is enough to light their faces up on camera. Johnny is adamant to point out that the low lighting helps to create ambience within the shots, refusing to entertain Mark’s ‘bullshit’ reasoning that it helps the ghosts feel more comfortable.

They fire up the cameras once again, Johnny begins getting shots of the dimly lit living room while Mark describes the chills he got when he first entered the place (not without interjection from his raven-haired elder). They lay all the groundwork for their investigation: telling the audience what they will be doing in the house and where. They first decide they will take a look at all the other rooms in the house, starting with the living room and ending with the sitting room.

Much to Mark's discomfort, they both agree that they have to spend the majority of their time in the fabled sitting room.

The apartment’s front door opens like a beast's mouth into a narrow hallway. There’s a three foot wide storage closet running along the left side of the threshold. A second shorter hallway branches off from the landing down into the old woman's bedroom toward the front portion of the apartment. Tarnished carpet abruptly turns into dated linoleum when the hallway reaches the kitchen to the right– where the boys where scolded by the landlord. To the left, off from the kitchen resides a bathroom and toileting area. The whole kitchen past a low standing counter opens up into a dining room and lounge (consisting of a cheap round table with three chairs, a creased black leather couch and a television from the 90s). Finally, nestled in line with the couch is the closed entrance into the sitting room. In stark comparison to the grime and general datedness of the rest of the apartment, the door is a pristine white with a rounded shiny silver handle. And uneasy feeling settles over Mark when he looks at it.

The first room on their agenda is the bedroom. The décor is as unassuming as the rest of the house. A twin bed is pushed against the outermost wall, to the right of it resides a dark redwood chest of drawers with a bronze vanity nestled on top. A closet is shoved to the right of the door. They leave the beside lamp on its dimmed setting in the corner of the room. Johnny wonders aloud how the old lady can sleep with her room backing directly onto the hallway outside.

After getting themselves set up and gaining a general feel for the room, Johnny made the call to start their cameras recording for the first of the EVP sessions. The term was among the other fancy ghost hunting jargon Mark had found when he first researched into the profession. Standing for ‘electronic voice phenomena’, EVPs are basically any provoked or unprovoked recordings of unexplainable voices or sounds during an investigation. The pair usually spend about ten to fifteen minutes in a room asking various questions (with banter interspersed throughout), inviting the ghouls to communicate with them in the hopes of capturing evidence on film. In post Mark scours for hours through audio files analyzing every breadth of possible proof. None of the recordings have been conclusive thus far.

“Okay guys,” Mark begins, drawing the first word out to a drawl. “So right now we are in the main bedroom of the apartment. As you can see things seem to be pretty average, pretty um… usual I guess.” He cuts himself short before he starts rambling. “We're gonna try and see if the ghost wants to talk to us.”

He looks away from the camera and addresses the eerily empty room. “So um.. good evening…”

Johnny snickers.

“..I’m Mark and this is Johnny-”

“Hi.”

“And we're here because we were told about some pretty strange things that went down in this apartment a few days ago. And.. we were wondering, i-if there's anyone else here with us, if you’d like to communicate or talk with us you can feel free to do so now. You could say something to us. You could… um.. move something in this room? My tall friend here has a flashlight so I guess you could turn that on. Something to let us know that you're here, and willing to talk.”

Johnny places the black flashlight atop the chest of drawers. The silence that follows permeates throughout the room chills Mark to the bone. He keeps thinking he sees things out the corner of his eye but the second he moves his head it stills. His eyes were playing tricks on him.

“I think it's overwhelmed by choice,” comes the timbre of Johnny's voice.

“Okay then,” Mark stalls as he tries to think of something he could request of the ghost. “I-if you’re here with us, then turn that flashlight on.”

The pair stare at the light for a few moments and Mark nearly jumps out of his own skin when a rustle is heard from the closet to their right.

Mark's gaze snaps over to the mirrored doors of the closet, Johnny looks up passively from the flashlight and follows the younger's stare. The blonde backs away when another rustle sounds, almost bumping into Johnny's broad chest. The sound is like metal scraping wood, carving patterns on the inside of the closet in three of four strokes. Mark turns to Johnny when the sound suddenly starts happening more rapidly.

“H-hyung?” His dark eyes are the size of dinner plates. The elder raises a brow.

“I think there's something in the closet,” Johnny offers. The corner of his mouth tilting into a slight smirk. _Asshole_.

An audible gulp joins the scratching sounds as Mark begins to approach the closet. His knuckles are white as he grips the camera. A floorboard creaks under his weight and the scratching halts. The blonde steels his nerves and raises a shaky hand to the cool handle of one of the doors. Johnny shifts behind him – probably to get a better angle. The hinges let out a pained groan as Mark slowly pried it open. He can vaguely make out various clothes hanging and a few boxes but nothing moves for what feels like a few minutes.

Something small and white darts out from under one of the boxes and onto the floorboards.

“FUCK!” Mark stumbles over his own feet in his scramble to get away. The camera goes skirting across the floor to the other side of the room. Pain erupts across Mark's skin from where his ass kisses the floor. Johnny has doubled over with laughter by the time Mark realizes that it wasn’t a ghost but simply a very _rea_ l mouse.

“We're editing that out,” the younger grumbles. Johnny’s black hair falls over his face as he rapidly shakes his head.

“Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p'. “Video editor decides what makes the final cut. That's staying in.”

Mark groans and picks himself up off the floor. Johnny pauses his laughter long enough to help him brush the dust off his pants. Mark relocates the camera and picks it up when Johnny speaks again.

“Now that we've discovered your fear of mice,” Mark flips him off. “I think we're done in here.”

“That’s the only thing I agree with you on.”

The rest of the EVPs in the other rooms before the sitting room go by pretty uneventfully. No interjections from neither ghouls _nor_ mice. Mark is back in the kitchen messing with the settings on his camera (stalling) and Johnny is checking the other rooms – making sure everything is left in place and undisturbed before they face the final boss. The house is still eerily quiet, having had no sound interference from the neighboring apartments or outside. Mark is surprised to learn that it has been almost two hours since they first got here. The whole space seeming to operate on an entirely different plane of existence. The hair on the back of Mark's neck stands on end.

A gasp from down the hall justifies that.

His head snaps to the direction of the kitchen's entrance. “Hyung?”

No reply. He walks tentatively towards the entrance. “Johnny?”

Only silence. Tightness builds up in the back of Mark's throat as we assumes the worst. Assumes that when he rounds the corner he will see Johnny stung up by his neck with a tormented spirit beside him. Prepares to scream and fight whatever anguished soul has captured his friend.

He let’s out an indignant yelp when Johnny appears from around the corner.

The older blinks at Mark's flailing arms as the boy recovers. Held in his large hands is a box-shaped object, Mark eyes it as Johnny enters the kitchen. A smirk graces his features.

“Look what I found,” he goads, placing it on the counter. Mark recognizes the dark brown wood and black cursive lettering. A Ouija board.

“Oh hell no,” Mark says immediately. Backing away from the offending board.

“C'mon, it could be fun to try and use it.” The raven cocks his hip against the bench.

“I don’t even know how to ‘ _use it_ ’, hyung,” Mark replies. “I don’t even _want_ to know.”

“Looks like it's been used before,” Johnny notes. Running a finger along the various scrapes in the varnish.

Mark approaches carefully and studies it from afar. There is a significant amount of scuffs along the top the board where the planchette has glided along it. Some letters are more tarnished than others but still discernable. The planchette itself, a white heart-shaped piece of plastic with a glass orb in the center, sports several dints and blemishes.

“Where did you even find this?” Mark looks up from the board.

Johnny shrugs. “The storage closet by the front door.”

Mark blanches, eyes widening a fraction. “Dude!? We were told not to snoop! We’re probably already in trouble for opening the bedroom closet!”

“Psh, it’s not like either of them are gonna watch the episode,” Johnny says.

“Why would the old lady have one of these?” Mark wonders out aloud.

His hyung levels him with a blank stare. “It's a just a board game.”

“ _Okay_ , well,” Mark huffs. “If it's ‘just a board game’ then we can leave it out of the episode.”

A pause. Johnny's broad shoulders slump a fraction as he gathers the board and the planchette off the counter. A childish pout adorns his features.

Mark weighs their options. He could leave the board and all its secrets be; never to be uncovered again. Which would essentially eat him alive worse than any ghoul that pops out of that thing could. Alternatively, they could try it out with the whole theatrics. Dim the lights, light some candles and sit on the floor of the sitting room. They could call out for spirits to try and communicate with them. And nothing might happen – they could sit there like idiots for a few minutes and laugh about it later. Or… _or_ they could finally gain some legitimate proof…

“Ugh fucking _fine_.”

Johnny pauses at the entrance to the kitchen, turning around to regard his friend.

“I'll search up how to use it,” Mark continues, his voice a low grumble. “We can try it out and see what happens.”

Johnny smiles at this, placated. “I knew you'd come around.” He darts off into the sitting room.

“If we die, I’ll kill you,” Mark called out to his retreating back.

Conveniently, the cellular reception on Mark's phone was operating at turtle speed, only allowing him to load up a single (albeit, sketchy) page with information on how to conduct a séance with a Ouija board. He tries to swallow down the nerves while he looks through the kitchen cupboards for candles and some matches.

By the time they’re seated face to face on the floor of the sitting room Mark had barely had a moment spare to rethink his decision. They’ve filmed establishing shots of the record player, the poofy sitting chair in the corner and the nondescript trinkets atop the mantelpiece. Johnny's camera is set up on a tripod between them to their left, facing the table with the record player and they’ve managed to clip Mark's camera to his shirt. Though the blond managed to find a zip lighter in one of the kitchen drawers, there is a distinct lack of usable candles in the house. He managed to improvise a line of four blue and white striped birthday candles shoved into some foam.

“Perfect,” Johnny chuckles when he spies them.

“Shut up,” Mark mutters his reply, exacerbated. He places the tips of his fingers of both hands on top of the planchette and motions for Johnny to do the same. Despite being bathed in the warm glow of candlelight, the room couldn’t be more stagnant or cold. They breathe together for a moment.

If someone had told Mark two years ago that we would be a college attendee in the course of his dreams, who plays with Ouija boards and various other ghostly shit on the side, he would probably laugh in their face. He finds that now, when facing the possibility of contacting spirits successfully for the first time, he reflects more on how far his life has come than he has ever cared to do in the past.

“If there's anyone here in this room with us tonight,” he begins, after spelling out ‘H-E-L-L-O' with the plastic planchette. “We are calling out to the one responsible for terrorizing the lady who lives here. The one who is acquainted with that record player. Can you, um, tell us your name please?”

They look down to their hands over the scuffed board. Anticipating it to move at any moment to a letter.

_If this thing moves I’m gonna lose it._

Johnny snickers. _Oh shit I said that out loud._

“Heard you’re a Michael Jackson fan,” Johnny says, his features morphed into a wicked grin. Mark wants to tell him to cut it out but he's too focused on starting intently at the board.

Mark's stomach feels like it’s going to fall out of his butt. Seconds pass by at the pace of hours.

Nothing happens.

“Well that’s a surprise,” Johnny says, his voice slicing through the tense atmosphere. Mark didn’t know what he expected – he should feel relief that it didn’t work. But he can't manage to shake off the disappointment that settles in the pit of his stomach. Johnny lets go of the planchette and hauls himself off the floor, cracking his knuckles and stretching his arms high above his head. He cuts the camera on the tripod rolling and walks towards the table housing the record player. Mark tries with one hand to scroll through the rest of the information page on his phone but it goes no further. The words on the page fade to white. The blonde boy removes his other hand from the planchette and refreshes the page to no avail. The only thing that loads this time is the tacky title art and an advertisement for watermelon candy.

“Oh…” comes Johnny’s exclamation to his right. “Holy shit.” Mark is too exhausted and drained to get his hopes up about anything else, but still stands to check out what Johnny has found.

He wishes he hadn’t.

There, below the record player, branded into the dark wood grain of the unassuming coffee table, is an inverted pentagram.

Now, while Mark has been willing to sacrifice a slice of his sanity for the sake of proving if ghosts, spirits or other ambivalent entities are real, he had elected to stand by one rule and one rule only. The single rule that he had read a thousand times when researching the topic. The one rule he had never broken regardless of circumstance which was: _do not fuck with demons_.

The pentagram is around a foot in diameter, branded in stark contrast to the unmarred surface of the coffee table. Black scuff marks tarnish the bottom of the record player where it had slid over the seal. The indent is a good inch into the thickness of the table and the edges are scorched black and raised slightly.

“Woah, you okay dude?” Johnny questions. Mark's face had morphed sheet white as he glared at the pentagram.

“Fuck this house,” Mark says simply. Recalling the scuffs on the Ouija board. How used it was. “We're leaving.”

Johnny hummed thoughtfully, looking pointedly around the room. “I’m not much for interior design, but a little paint could fix it right up.”

“I’m serious, dude,” Mark urges, shaking his head. Johnny turns back to him.

“Why are you so freaked out about this?”

“Why aren't _you_!?”

“This is all bullshit anyway.”

While they argued, neither of them noticed the planchette moving over the glossy surface of the board.

“How could you _still_ stand by that after all we've heard and now _this_??”

The heart shaped plastic started to count down from zero… nine…

“This could easily have been a set up.”

…eight… seven… six…

“Wh- _how_?”

…five…

“Think about it Mark. The old lady reports some ‘shady business’ in her apartment. She plants all this stuff in here. She complains to Mr Landord and gets a free lavish holiday as compensation.”

…four… three… two…

“Oh..”

…one.

Mark sighs. His nerves dissipating considerably. He had to admit that his hyung had a point. Hearing that rationale left Mark feeling more calm, if not slightly miffed. Granted, Mark always first assumed that people have the best intentions. Clarity for Johnny came with being older; having experienced more and lived in much rougher places than the uneventful city Mark had lived all his life.

“I-… I still wanna leave though…” Mark eyed the blackened scorched edges of the engraving. His voice was small, vulnerable.

“That's okay too,” Johnny gently replies. Because, while he is unperturbed by this stuff because he doesn’t buy into it, he's not a monster. Forcing Mark to stay in an environment he is clearly uncomfortable in is not what friends are for. Besides, they have more than enough footage to make an interesting episode.

Mark turns around and blows out the candles. Small trails of smoke linger in the air. He grabs the Ouija board off the floor and chokes on his saliva.

“You good?” Johnny slaps him on the back and the coughing dissipates.

“Fine,” Mark's reply is hoarse. He didn’t think there was that much smoke in the air. “Let’s just put this back in the closet and leave this fucking place.”

There were no protests from his elder as they returned the candles and matches to their rightful place, dropping the board off in the storage closet by the front door. Mark parries out of the exit without his usual ‘farewell’ speech to the location. Johnny reasons that he must _really_ have been spooked by what they found.

The way home for Mark is like a lucid dream, each event and happenstance occurring around him too fast and too slow simultaneously. He bids Johnny farewell at his stop on the subway and puts his headphones on to try and gather his thoughts. It must've worked because before he knows it the doors are opening and his feet are carrying his body onto the platform.

In stark contrast to the way over, the darkness between the streetlamps don't bother the blonde boy. An eerie sense of calm having settled into his bones.

It isn’t until he has braved the four flights of stairs up to his apartment and entered his home that it dissipates. The resounding click of his front door closing behind him breaks him out of his reprieve.

He unlaces his ghost hunting boots and places them neatly next to his collection by the front door. His feet breathing a sigh of relief as they melt into the floor of his entrance hallway. He pads his way down into his small kitchen and living room area – the largest space he could afford within his budget on the off-campus student housing listings. He draws the blinds that rest over the scruffy old couch when a cold sensation stops him dead in his tracks.

He isn’t alone in his apartment.

A gripping feeling rises in his throat as he turns around slowly. Each muscle in his body goes rigid. When he finally sees what could only be described as a boy leaning against his kitchen counter. The boy, looking not much younger than Mark, is barefoot and dressed plainly in a black, loose fitting long sleeve shirt and black pants. His glare at Mark is almost as intense as his bright red hair. The roots are a deeper red, like dried blood. Upon closer inspection, the boy's eyes are a similar color.

Mark doesn’t know how he finds his voice. “Who are you?”

The boy blinks slowly. Then rolls his crimson orbs. “Your fairy godmother.”

For a moment, Mark can only stare dumbly at the boy. His voice is low and nasally, and his eyes narrow when he speaks. Perhaps Mark stared for too long trying to think of a response, because eventually the boy tilts his head back and to the left so he is looking at Mark through lazily half closed lids.

“I’m a demon you moron,” he smirks. Mark spies the glint of his pointed canines. “You've been cursed.”

Deep down in his subconscious, Mark already knew this. But hearing the words out aloud made the tightness in his chest move back up to his throat, as if someone were gripping and squeezing. And maybe there was. Because the demon's smirk is the last thing Mark sees before his vision blackens and his body hits the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh woah you made it all the way down here hello
> 
> That just about wraps it up for the ‘Unsolved’ type adventures for this fic. The rest of it is very MarkHyuck centric from here. Regardless, I hope you enjoyed this introduction!! (Don’t worry, Johnny isn’t completely gone)
> 
> Also I’m aware that Michael Jackson has kinda become a problematic subject recently, but the irony was too good to pass up. Figured Haechannie has already shown an interest and love for his music and that isn’t a direct reflection of support for his actions. Plus, I just kept imagining the opening of that song playing down the hall during the night and that shit is _terrifying_.
> 
> Until the next update~


	2. Chapter 2

Mark wakes with a start to the annoying ringtone of his phone. Disoriented, he looks down his body to find himself fully clothed and draped over his couch. There’s a dull ache at the back of his head towards the base of his skull. The ringing only makes it worsen.

_That was a weird dream_. He puzzles, noting his empty apartment. Light is wafting in from the gaps in the curtain above the couch, flooding the area around the widow. He must have crashed hard when he got home. Considering that he is still dressed in his clothes from yesterday. The ringing of his phone still slices through the apartment. By the time he finds it (on the coffee table in front of the couch) the call had gone to voicemail.

“Ugh thank Lucifer you're awake,” a nasally voice sounds from his bathroom. A figure comes waltzing out and Mark's brows furrow in confusion. “That thing hasn't stopped ringing all morning.”

Finally, Mark's clouded brain catches up. He takes it all in. The clothes, the hair, the eyes, the voice. All of it matches the boy from his dream… or… unless it was…

“Also, you're gonna have to stock up your fridge sometime soon,” the boy, the _demon_ , says. “Seriously, how have you survived this long when all you seem to have is dirt cheap ramen?”

Before Mark can speak, his phone begins to ring. Mark almost jumps out of his skin at the noise. He hastily snatches it off the coffee table and brings it to his face with a shaky hand. The illuminated screen tells him that the caller ID is his mother’s. And he does _not_ have the headspace to deal with all of this right now.

So he throws his phone across the room.

Both he and the demon watch as the phone goes flying into the wall by the bathroom door. Without a case, the glass shatters into a cobweb pattern across the still illuminated screen. It lands face down on the floorboards and the ringing and vibrating are silenced abruptly. Mark hopes it didn't dent the wall.

The demon pauses, regarding the device. Suddenly he looks straight into Mark's eyes with a blank expression.

“Well that was dramatic.”

_This can't be happening_. Mark eyes the exit, trying to calculate the chances of his escape. A small voice in the rear of his mind tells him that if the demon wanted to kill him, it would have done so while he was out cold. Another voice reminds him that perhaps this one wants to play with its food.

“Aw,” the demon coo's. “Wanting to leave so soon? We've barely discussed anything.”

‘ _Discussed_ ’? Mark's eyebrows draw together. _What would there be to discuss?_

The demon must have seen the visible confusion on Mark's features. It sighs. “Look, dumbass. Think of this as your golden ticket to a better life. You tell me what you most desire… I make it happen… I eat your soul when you die..”

“My s-soul?” Mark's dark eyes widen.

“Oh, he _speaks_ ,” the demon goads. Its head tilts and its crimson eyes glint with something mischievous. “ _Yes_ , your _soul_ idiot. Think of me like a wish granting genie – only… I guess with less bling. And I’m not blue. _And_ there’s a price to pay-“

“I-I don’t have anything I want from you,” Mark hates how small his voice sounds. His ass is balanced precariously on the edge of his couch. His muscles tighten when the demon scoffs and places forward so it's standing in front of the coffee table.

“Liar,” it snarls, leaning over the coffee table and into Mark's space. “You humans always want something. So what is it, pretty boy? You want fame? Money? Women?”

Each suggestion drops off the demon's tongue like molten lava. Mark shakes his head.

The demon falters all of a sudden, seeming to register the genuine fear pooling in Mark's dark eyes. The way the blonde boy kept his hands by his sides. There was a fear stricken trembling of his whole body. Instinctively, the demon leans out of his space, their eyes no longer level. It takes another step back and the human visibly calms. Once far enough away, Mark feels like he can finally breathe again. He watches as something akin to regret and guilt swims in the demon's crimson eyes.

“I don’t have anything I want from you,” Mark repeats. Stronger this time. “I just wanna send you home, and get on with my life.”

Confusion is added to the concoction within the hellspawn’s blood red orbs. It’s dark eyebrows draw together as if maneuvered by a string. This expression only lasts a couple seconds, flashing away almost as quickly as it formed as if the demon realizes the outward display of emotion. Its black lined eyes narrow and its top lip twitches in a snarl. Mark notes that the new expression reminds him of a cornered alley cat. He can almost imagine the hackles.

“I _won’t_ go back to that old hag,” It seethes. The demon's nose twitches. “She reeks of baby powder… and prunes.”

Mark is reminded of a petulant child for a moment. He decides he is tired of referring to the demon as an ‘it'. Suddenly starkly aware of how young the being appears.

“What's your name?” the blonde boy finds himself asking.

The demon hesitates. Seemingly caught off guard by the question. The reply only comes after eyeing Mark for a bit.

“Donghyuck,” the demon states simply. “My friends call me Haechan. But _you_ …” Looks Mark up and down. “Are _not_ my friend.”

“I’m Mark,” he replies. Brown eyes flicking down to the black attire. “How uh.. old are you?”

A pause. “I died young.”

“What pronoun do I call you?”

“ _The fuck is with all the questions?_ ”

Mark flinches at the snap. The demon's body language is entirely defensive now: arms folded over tightly, chest concaved in a slouch.

“I'm sorry,” Mark says. “I just didn’t want to keep calling you an ‘it’ in my head.”

There’s another pause but this time the demons eyes soften. “’He' is fine.” Its – _his_ voice is softer, less accusatory. Mark sighs gratefully, finally some progress.

“Okay well, _Donghyuck_ ,” Mark begins. “By ‘home’ before I didn’t mean back to the old lady's. I was more trying to say um, sending you back _home_. Like um, back to hell?”

The demon blinks.

“You mentioned friends didn’t you?” Mark asks.

A frown. “ _Of course_ I have friends, moron. Unlike _you_.”

“You’re insufferable,” the blonde boy sighs. “I meant do you have friends in hell to go back to- oh you know what, forget it. Just tell me how we got cursed together.”

“Because you’re stupid,” Donghyuck replies. Mark is about to protest before he continues. “And I’m pretty sure you and your giant ass friend share about three brain cells between you.”

“Wh-..”

“ _Because_ , the two of you turned your back on the board _without_ closing the séance. All it took was for me to draw off the fearful energy you projected while you were shitting yourself over the old lady's pentagram, giving me enough power to be able to manipulate the board myself and escape. You touched it first, and now here we are.”

“So uh,” Mark starts dumbly. “You're free from that house now?”

Donghyuck hesitates. “Well,” he looks down at the scuffed floorboards and shifts on his bare feet. “Not technically I think. I never broke my binding with the stupid record player. Like who even _curses_ a fucking _record player_? But like, I’m not with it anymore… so I don’t really know what happens now.” He looks up at Mark. “But I _don’t_ want to be stuck there again.”

“Okay so,” Mark takes the information in. “Is there any way to break uh, to break the ‘binding’ or whatever?”

The demon considers this. His expression shifts from skeptical, to thoughtful then to outright exasperated. “There is,” he begins. “But we need the record player to do it.”

“I think the Landlord said she wasn’t getting back until the 10th from a holiday or something,” Mark recalls. “So looks like we're stuck with each other until then.”

Mark says it with a nervous chuckle. He realizes that it now means he’s going to have to entertain and house a demon for a week. Without a working phone. He looks over to his poor smartphone, still lying on the hardwood floor by the bathroom entrance. He'll have to get that fixed.

“Well I’m bored already,” the demon breaks the silence. Mark stands To check the time on the one working analogue clock in his apartment on the kitchen counter. He notices the way the demon flinches slightly. It was 1:42 in the afternoon, and the blonde boy realizes he’d managed to essentially sleep the whole day away. His chest constricts when he thinks about all the work he could have gotten done.

“I've gotta work for a while,” Mark gestures with his thumb to his room. “But I have an old laptop that I could load Netflix onto or something?”

The demon looks down to his feet and shifts awkwardly. Mark takes it as a yes and disappears into his room, fishing out his ancient Toshiba laptop from high school out of his desk drawer. By the time he paces back into the lounge the demon had settled himself onto the corner of the couch, nestled into the juncture between the canvas back and arm. His feet were tucked under him.

When Mark approaches the couch the demon shied away – either consciously or unconsciously, so Mark opts to sit on the floor between the couch and coffee table. He can feel the demon's crimson eyes watching him curiously as he starts the laptop up and downloads the application. The only noise between them is the rumbling fan within the confines of the laptop's shell.

“Should be good to go now,” Mark declares after logging onto his account, his recent watches were empty. He turns around to find the demon eyeing the device carefully, still angled away as if he expects it to explode.

“Do you,” Mark begins carefully. He clears his throat. “Do you know how to use a laptop?”

The demon's jaw clenches and he brings his dark eyes up to glare into Mark's.

“Okay…” the blonde boy drawls. “So it’s pretty easy. All you've gotta do is drag your finger along this pad like this.” He moves his index finger a long the mouse pad. “That moves this little clicker thing around – uh c-called a ‘mouse’, and-..”

“So you’re not afraid of this one?” the demon's glare had morphed into a smirk. Mark had to pause and register what the demon meant, embarrassment tinting his cheeks when he recalls his reaction to the mouse in the closet back at the house.

“You.. uh.. you saw that..?” Mark squeaked. Donghyuck nods, his smirk still in place.

Mark clears his throat again awkwardly. “Anyway… once you have the clicker over a movie or show you wanna watch, just tap the pad lightly like this.” He demonstrates as the talks, hovering over ‘ _Stranger Things_ ’ in his recommended and clicking. “Then it'll bring you to this page and you press ‘play'.”

The demon had been observing the rest of the process with his head tilted curiously. Mark paused the show on the Netflix logo, hoping Donghyuck got the gist of what to do. It wasn’t until the demon untangled his legs from beneath him and shifted forward on the couch that Mark made to stand up. Donghyuck situated himself in front of the laptop and looked up expectantly to the human for any more instruction.

“If you don’t wanna watch that show just press that arrow button up top,” the blonde boy explained. “There's heaps of stuff on there to watch.”

Crimson eyes flickered from the human to the screen. In a soft voice, the demon replies. “This one is fine.”

Sated, Mark paces from the living room into his bedroom. He contemplates closing the door to filter the sound but in stead opts to just listen to music on his old I-pod to keep himself focused. The inexplicably polite part of him not wanting to abandon a guest behind a closed door. Not even a demon guest.

His room is about as plain and small as the rest of his apartment: single bed shoved against the back wall with no other furniture other than a brown second hand desk occupying the opposite corner. Across from the bed there is a built-in closet with sliding doors, one of them half open because it had derailed from its sliding track years before Mark’s clothes inhabited its confines. The cream colored walls are bare save for a generic oil painting above his desk that had come with the apartment. Mark had never bothered to take it down nor personalize much of the space. More focused on rather the activities and progress he can manage to get done while there.

A sigh escapes his lips when he settles into the rickety desk chair and wheels himself forward. After taking a few moments to set things up (clearing the keyboard his computer of unopened college party invites, fishing out his old I-pod shuffle, and fetching his ghost hunting camera from the kitchen bench) he put his headphones on and set to work. The demon had barely looked up from the laptop screen when Mark had walked past, so the blond boy proceeded with the confidence that he would be fine with Netflix for now.

Johnny had emailed him the rough draft of edited footage for their next ghost hunting episode. Attached to it was a lament about how Mark didn’t love him anymore, that their friendship was cancelled and that Mark had finally gone and broke his hyung's heart. All because Mark hadn't answered his call. Another email had been sent a little while after the first asking if he were dead. The younger downloaded the file and shot back an email assuring Johnny that they _where_ still friends, that Mark _wasn't_ dead, followed by a quick ‘ _quit being dramatic, hyung_ ’ for good measure. Mark added an additional explanation (lie) that he had dropped his phone – decidedly leaving the demon out of it.

He had considered telling Johnny about Donghyuck. Considered getting his phone fixed immediately and calling him up to gloat about actually being _right_. Had imagined Johnny's face when he finally met the demon and took in the eyes, the hair and the fangs for the first time just like Mark had. But, then again, that was assuming his elder actually _believed_ it. Chances of that were slim and the raven haired boy would probably chalk it up to a prank with mediocre cosmetics. Besides, Donghyuck didn’t seem to be the biggest fan of humans. And revealing his secret to Johnny felt like wrongfully outing him. Mark didn’t want to give the demon any more reason to tear his heart out so the boy sent the email and proceeded with his tasks.

While he worked, the stresses of the day previous easily gave way to the familiarity of hard work. Granted, it _was_ slightly difficult to forget the demon watching Netflix in the room adjacent while he edited sound for the ghost hunter episode. But aside from that everything else seemed to slip away.

At least it did until he heard his stomach growl over the music in his headphones. The digital clock on his desk told him he was well overdue for some food so he decided to take a quick break for dinner. Reasoning that it would also be a good chance to check that the demon hadn't broken anything.

When we stepped out from his room – seeming more like a cave with the only light source being the blue glow of his computer screen – it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the warm light streaming from the now open curtains. Faint stylized screams trickled from the speakers of his laptop, which was no longer on the table. The demon had moved it _and_ both the couch cushions to nestle in the corner of the room by the TV cabinet, forming a nest of sorts. The laptop was balanced on his knees.

The red haired boy looks to Mark when the human emerges, his crimson eyes dazed slightly from his immersion. Unsure what to say, Mark smiles awkwardly and makes his way into the kitchen. From the few name drops and lines he was able to hear, Mark could tell Donghyuck had switched from watching the TV show to one of the ‘ _Harry Potter_ ’ movies. He listens along as he prepares an overdue meal.

The demon looks taken aback for a long while when suddenly Mark holds out a cup of hot ramen in front of him. Mark's own steaming cup is nestled in the blonde boy's left hand, chop sticks peeking out the top.

“I know you said I needed to stock up on other stuff,” Mark says, noticing Donghyuck's hesitance. “But it's all I got for now. Um.. if you don’t like ramen I can go around the block and try find something else..?” He wracks his brain for take away joints nearby that might be suitable. The demon switches between looking at him and at the artificially flavored noodles.

“Demons eat souls,” Donghyuck blurts, as if overwhelmed by the offer of food. Mark blanches, retracting the cup and mentally kicking himself because of _course they do, dumbass_ and that he _shouldn’t assume all_ human _things apply here because this is a fucking_ demon.

Noticing the human's inner turmoil, Donghyuck reaches out. “Wait, wait, wait – stop overthinking it, loser. I’ll eat your stupid ramen.”

“But you said-..”

“I _know_ ,” Donghyuck places the laptop on the ground gently. “And we _do_ live off souls in the long term, but we can eat human food too. It's just less of a necessity for us.”

“Oh,” the demon takes the cup from Mark's hands. Even with the warmth from the water inside, Mark could feel the heat radiating from Donghyuck where their fingers brush. Mark wanted to say more, wanted to ask about demon anatomy and customs that might become important later. But Donghyuck settles back into his nest bathed in the warm glow of afternoon light streaming in from the window. Mark is loathe to disturb him.

The human returns to his room and flicks the light switch when he enters. With overhead light now flooding the room it feels less dank and claustrophobic when in comparison to the utopia next door. Mark places his cup on the desk beside his computer and sets back to work editing. Johnny had done a fantastic job editing the footage so far, and they had recorded voiceovers on site so there were only small touchups and sound mixing required of Mark for the most part. Other parts like the introduction, the EVP sessions and the mouse incident required specific backing tracks to add to the ambience or tension. Mark spent a few hours on these doing a deep dive into his and other royalty free online sound files trying out different tracks until he settled on the right ones. The part that took up most of his time was the ending of the episode. Johnny had kept the séance in but cut it short as if nothing happened afterward. Neither of them had recorded the pentagram beneath the record player so Johnny had re-used shots of the building from outside, establishing shots of the hallways and various rooms, obviously for Mark to say their final conclusion. Mark recorded a concluding voice over as a draft for the real thing and overlaid it with the visuals. Once that was wrapped up he sent it off to Johnny with a smiley face in the email.

He let out a yawn when he opened the file for his midterm assessment. His eyes were starting to get dry from staring at a screen for so long. Natural light from next door had long since faded so it was the light from Mark's room illuminating it in stead. The blonde boy popped the kinks out of his back and cracked his knuckles before starting on his schoolwork.

Like before, time seemed to move at a languid pace and everything but the beats and synths Mark was hearing melted away. His fingers skimmed over the keys and he sucked on the end of his pen in thought. A crevice between his brows would form whenever he analyzed a segment, looking for ways it could be _better_ , more dynamic, more fluid.

“Aren't humans supposed to be asleep by now?” A sleepy voice to his right startles him almost out of his chair. His head snaps in the direction of it and his mouse slips on the mousepad. Donghyuck is stood leaning against the doorway, head tilted slightly so his red bangs fall over his droopy eyelids.

Mark takes off his headphones and places them on his keyboard. It’s then that the stiffness of his joints hits him, protesting against his movements as if bound by rubber bands. He glances at his alarm clock and the numbers 1:27am glare back at him, he winces.

“Yeah,” Mark says, cracking his joints again. “I guess now would be an okay time to stop.” It wasn’t. Mark still felt like he had a million things left to do, but he felt bad about keeping Donghyuck awake.

“You're weird,” Donghyuck notes. Surprisingly Mark doesn’t take offense, fatigue finally catching up with him and settling in his bones.

“Do demons sleep?” Mark asks with a yawn.

“I do,” the other affirms.

The human let’s out a sigh as he stretches. “M'sorry,” he supplies, removing himself from the chair. Donghyuck doesn’t reply but he _does_ look confused by the apology. Mark squeezes past him to fetch some spare linen from a random drawer in the TV cabinet, noting that the other had disbanded his nest and had returned the couch cushions back to their rightful place. The laptop was closed shut on the coffee table. Mark attempts to rub the grogginess out of his eyes before setting to work fixing up a suitable place for someone to sleep. Once he's satisfied he turns back to Donghyuck.

“I can sleep here if you want, ‘n you can take my room?” He offers, motioning to the couch. An emotion Mark didn’t have the energy to discern falls over the demon's face. Then he sobers.

“Like _hell_ ,” he scoffs. “Who knows what kind of human germs you've got in there.”

Mark rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue. He removes himself from Donghyuck's path and the demon settles under the covers of the makeshift bed. Before breaching the threshold into his room, Mark hesitates in the doorway. His eyes flicker briefly to the demon, who watches him carefully.

“G'night, Donghyuck,” Mark says. Sleep finally draining the awkwardness from him, his voice is husky but unstained. Almost soft. The demon eyes him as he walks the rest of the way into his room, preparing himself for bed. He forgoes brushing his teeth for tonight, opting to take a shower tomorrow before class. He settles into bed and the springs creak beneath his weight in a chorus of groans. Before sleep finally claims him he swears he hears a soft and faint, almost hesitant voice in the distance.

“Goodnight, Mark.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thankyou for reading ♡


	3. Chapter 3

The morning of the next day was a lot less confusing than the last time Mark woke up. Like usual for a Monday morning, his alarm clock blares into the darkness of his room at 6:30 and Mark stumbles his way to it’s green neon glow and shuts it off. He gives himself a few minutes to rub out the sleep caked in the corners of his eyes while he braces himself against his desk. After this, he tries to gracefully make his way through the living room to the bathroom using the tiny silver of daylight that had managed to peek over the buildings. Only vaguely registering the blanket covered lump on his couch as his guest by the tuft of red locks it had sprouted.

The blonde boy showers, barely managing to freshen up with the sliver of warm water trickling from the apartment building's rusted pipes. He dries off and paces back into his room with the towel wrapped around his hips.

When he resurfaces again, dressed in a plain white tee and ripped dark wash jeans, he notices idly that Donghyuck had abandoned being a bundle on the couch. _And_ that the demon had managed to find his stash of sugary cereal (decidedly less idle about that). Still dressed in the black cloth shirt and pants combo, the demon was sat cross-legged on his kitchen counter, munching on the rainbow colored cereal straight out of the box. Mark sets two bowls on the counter next to his guest, the demon watching him out the corner of his eye.

“Your ass is on the counter,” was Mark's greeting. The demon continued munching.

“Hadn't noticed,” he snarks. His grip tightening on the box when Mark attempts to grab it. Crimson eyes meet chocolate brown sharply. Then, after regarding the bowls, he surrenders the cereal.

The red haired boy leans back with an air of nonchalance, bracing himself on his hands. He sighs as he watches Mark pour the cereal. “So what are we doing today?” he asks.

Mark retrieves a carton of long life milk from the fridge. “ _I_ am going to my classes,” he replies, adding the milk to both bowls. “ _You_ are staying here and out of trouble.”

He pushes the cereal toward Donghyuck, the only spoon in his apartment balancing on the edge. Mark picks his own up and leans against the counter opposite him, eating his own breakfast with a fork. The demon starts eating too.

“Slight problem,” he supplies helpfully between bites. Mark motions with his utensil for him to explain. “You're _cursed_ , genius. The further away you get from me the more _both_ of us hurt. So no can do.”

“So then,” Mark starts with a frown. “How can you be away from the record player?”

The demon diverts eye contact to stare into his bowl. “I don’t know,” Donghyuck mumbles. “I never paid much attention to the material binding lessons.”

There was a lot to unpack with that. Mark’s eyebrows draw together. So, _apparently_ the demon didn’t have all the answers? There were different rules depending on the object central to the binding? _Demons had lessons?_ Demons had _classes_ and presumably _school_ that Donghyuck _didn’t_ pay attention to???

He was about to offload all the questions when Donghyuck continued. “But what I _do_ know is that you can’t leave here unless I leave.”

The questions died on Mark’s tongue. He looked the boy up and down, assessing all the problems his outward appearance could pose. The hair and eyes especially, but also the clothes that look like they were nightwear for an emo 1800s servant, and the fangs.

“Do you have any other clothes?” Mark asks. The demon recoils defensively, crossing his arms and clutching the thin fabric of his shirt.

“What's wrong with my clothes?” he mumbles. Mark’s eyes widen.

“Nothing, nothing they’re fine,” the blond boy reaches out a hand of assurance, scrambling. But stops short when the demon flinches away; a reminder of the apparent no touching rule. “It's just that… it’s not gonna be warm enough to wear outside.”

The demon blinks slowly at him. Mark knows he didn’t buy the excuse but remained silent anyway.

“You can borrow some of mine for today,” the human suggests. “Then we can swing by the mall on the way back and get you your own clothes. Plus some contacts… maybe some hair dye…”

“Okay but _I_ get to choose all of them,” Donghyuck says. Mark pouts.

“Why though?” he whines. “I have good taste.”

Crimson eyes incredulously drag up and down Mark's current attire, without the least bit of subtlety. His posture relaxes measurably. Donghyuck clicks this tongue. “Whatever, nerd.”

After dumping their bowls in the sink and washing their hands, Mark allows Donghyuck privacy to raid his closet for something comfortable while he prepares his things for class. (After having been brazenly _forced_ out of his own room by the hellspawn). He locates his backpack among his equipment from yesterday. His first lecture of the day begins at 8:00am but nobody ever gets there until 8:30 – not even the professor. They’re on time to leave when Donghyuck finally emerges from Mark's room. Clad in just about the only black articles of clothing he owns: a dark graphic tee beneath a plain black zip up jacket paired with tapered legged joggers. Despite obviously begrudging footwear, Mark manages to convince the demon to don a pair of sleek, plain label dark grey sneakers. Forgiving the absence of black due to how dark they are.

The demon had expressly mentioned he'd rather die again than wear Mark's underwear.

It’s strange to Mark seeing his clothes on another person, but he's glad all the items Donghyuck has picked seem to fit him comfortably thanks to their similar heights. Before they leave, Mark pulls on a blue bomber jacket and hands a grey beanie to Donghyuck. The demon tugs it over his blazing red hair as they venture down the hall.

The morning air is fresh but not bitter enough to pierce through their light layers. Mark is surprised how close Donghyuck stays to him as they navigate the streets to the nearest subway station. The demon seemed to be in awe of the bustling bodies and journeying cars, but never allowed his gaze to land one thing for too long. There was tension in his shoulders the whole time and he shuffled closer to Mark when the train came screeching down the tunnel.

Once uptown, the volume of suit-clad businessmen and uniformed high-school students joined the steady flow of college kids in the streets. None of them gave Donghyuck a second glance as they passed by, the pair made it to Mark's University without a hitch.

Mark settled into his usual seat towards the right of the auditorium, about the fifth or sixth row from the back. Donghyuck left a seat space as a buffer between them and Mark got himself set up for the lecture. The demon watched him out the corner of his eye as the blonde boy extended the seat desk and placed his notebook, pens and sticky notes onto it’s well-worn surface. Eventually, Donghyuck extended his own desk, pulled his hoodie up over his beanie clad head and rested his chin upon his folded arms. Effectively blending in with the other arrivals in the auditorium who were just about as dead inside.

After a few minutes, the professor walked in from the hall and immediately jumped into the lecture. Mark placed his gold framed spectacles on the bridge of his nose and started taking notes.

After the two hour lecture, his body is begging him for some coffee. He takes Donghyuck across campus to his preferred café: Yuta hyung, the Japanese exchange student who never left, greets him as soon as he has his foot in the door. Mark orders his usual americano and Donghyuck mumbles his order: a hazelnut latte with extra whipped cream. The irony isn’t lost on Mark.

He hurries the demon out of the café. Lest the raised eyebrows and mischievous looks Yuta keeps throwing between the pair turns into a very awkward conversation. His elder gives them a muffin each, on the house, but it still isn’t enough to make them stay – Mark hurrying out the excuse that his next class is starting in ten minutes as he ushers the confused demon out the door.

Their next and final stop of the day on campus is a three hour sound production tutorial in the computer labs. This class never really had a set structure and many people come and go as they see fit – if they even show up at all. Mark would use this time to catch up on readings, mess around with sound bites and work on his final project.

They manage to find a quiet corner in the lab surrounded by vacant spaces. On the opposite end of the room there’s the usual group of around six or seven people who use the time as a bludge session. Several of them are sitting on the desks and they’re talking loudly amongst themselves. Donghyuck takes a seat next to Mark and glares at them from across the room. The demon then gathers a stack of paper from one of the printers and starts to doodle idly. His left leg bounces while he draws.

Despite the noise, Mark manages to get a fair bit of work done. In between eating his muffin and drinking his coffee, he carefully edits and makes notes on his final piece, even successfully reads ahead for his lecture tomorrow. He’s broken out of his focused aura when he suddenly notices two bodies standing next to him.

He turns and removes his headphones to see two girls from the chatty group staring at him expectantly.

“Uh, hi?” Mark squeaks, a lump forming in his throat. The two girls giggle. The one on the left hides behind her taller friend, her light brown hair tied in a messy bun atop her head.

“Hey there,” the taller one replies, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder. She tilts her head slightly, trying to subtly inspect Mark's coffee cup. “You're name's ‘Shark' right?”

Mark swallows, Donghyuck shifts next to him, pointedly staring away from the girls. “Um.. i-it's Mark,” he says.

“Of course,” she says without hesitation, her voice is a drawl as if she would literally rather be anywhere else. “So, ‘Mark',” she continues. “We were thinking about ditching this class to go smoke. And we were wondering if you wanted to come with? My friend likes your glasses.”

Mark stammers. The other girl behind her squeaks and buries her face in her hands. Turning a brighter shade of red than Donghyuck’s beanie-covered hair. Said boy, who had been silent and avoidant the whole time, looks up to stare daggers directly at the tall girl. She pales visibly, presumably at his striking eyes and fixated gaze. She takes a step back but her catlike eyes narrow sharply and she looks back to Mark.

“No thanks,” He manages. She scoffs.

“Your loss.”

They walk away, the taller girl dragging the shy one by her forearm. Something to the effect of ‘ _loser_ ’ and ‘ _weirdo_ ’ being mumbled under her breath.

Mark turns in his chair to face Donghyuck, who was still throwing a glare at their retreating backs. To his surprise, Mark isn’t worried about the girl seeing Donghyuck's true eye color – the look on her face was kinda priceless. The human tilts his head so he floods Donghyuck's view, meeting said blazing eyes for himself. “You aren't gonna set them on fire with your mind, are you?”

The demon's glare softens. “That'd be a waste.” With a soft smile he turns back to his drawing which, to Mark's surprise, is actually _really_ good. Despite being monochromatic in blue pen ink, the image on the page captures the peace and tranquility of rolling hills and dew-filled grass. The foreground depicts tall stalk-like objects that, upon closer inspection, Mark realizes are sunflowers.

He also finds himself thinking that the flowers are almost as nice as the smile he saw from the demon just now.

The human sighs. “I guess we could head out now.” It was 1:30pm, the tutorial would be officially ending in 15 minutes. But, given that Mark was already ahead and had gotten a lot done on his assignment the previous night, he supposed they could afford to get to the mall now before it gets too busy.

Donghyuck shrugs, placing the pen back in Mark's pencil case and discarding the used paper into the recycle bin. A frown shadowed the blonde boy's face at the waste but didn’t trust his voice to say otherwise.

Their walk across campus is quiet save for the slight thumping of Mark's heart within his ribcage. The blonde boy narrows this down to the fact that he has never left class early before. The pair weave their way between buildings of various size, the sound of traffic and shuffling feet grow louder the closer they get to the main road.

During their walk to the mall, the demon was far more relaxed. Keeping his gaze relatively to himself – as not to cause a stir of confusion among the general public. This however, was broken entirely when a sweet, almost pungent smell invaded his senses. The demon's gaze locked onto a cone of tangerine ice cream grasped tightly in the small hands of a little girl.

Noticing the stutter in his step, Mark found himself following the demon's gaze with a glance. The slight crease to the blonde's eyebrows smoothed when he noted his fixation on the orange colored confectionary.

“Wanna stop in?”

Donghyuck's crimson eyes snapped away from the girl to Mark. The taller stopped them on the path as other commuters maneuvered around them. With a lanky arm, the human gestured to the shop front next to them.

“We haven’t had much to eat today,” he said. “We could stop in and get a cone each?”

Wordlessly the demon regarded where the human was pointing behind him. The little girl was seated with her parents out the front of a pastel-decorated shop front. The outdoor seats where formed from pale aqua wire and the windows on the doors were shaped like hearts. A large fiberglass ice cream cone is suspended above them, glowing slightly. Beyond the doors, the demon could see two benches with glass covering the top halves. Smiley people adorned in white aprons milled about behind them.

“Have you ever had ice cream before, Donghyuck?” Mark found himself asking in the demon's silence. Without turning around to look at him, Mark noticed his shoulders draw upward with tension. His hooded head bowed slightly and Mark could imagine the eye roll and accompanying scowl.

“No.”

“Did you wanna try-…”

“ _Yes_ ,” the demon interrupted. Voice strained by what Mark assumed was frustration with his offer. A spike of panic shot through Mark's chest, readying himself to retract the offer until the demon turned to face him. His features open and free of visible indignation. “…please?”

“Okay,” Mark matched the demon's tone: quiet and soft. Speaking more to himself than anyone else. The human paces forward, placing a gentle hand on the demon's shoulder without a second thought. The demon allowed it as he followed Mark into the ice cream parlor.

They do end up getting a cone each. Mark with a scoop of watermelon sorbet and Donghyuck with limited edition tangerine ice cream. The blonde boy watches as subtly as he can as the demon’s face morphs from wary to confused and eventually to satisfied with every kitten lick of the frozen treat. Mark figured he’s taking the whole ‘eating ice cream with a demon’ thing quite well when they finally reach the mall.

With sticky hands and full bellies, Mark leads them to a discount pharmacy close by the entrance to the mall. Navigating the labyrinth of tall shelves until they reach the hair dye section – in the same place Mark had remembered it being when he tried out his current blonde style during mid semester break. He watches in silence as Donghyuck makes his selection and pays little mind to the color as they move to the cosmetic contacts isle.

“You gonna be okay putting those in your eyes?” Mark questions as Donghyuck selects a rich brown pair of contacts. The latter levels him with a look.

“I'll manage, bird brain.” He mutters. “Demons _can_ change their eye color. It just takes practice.”

Mark mulls this over for a moment. Checking to make sure there's nobody around before he speaks. “Do they teach you that too?” He asks. “Like they teach you about uh.. binding and possession and stuff?”

“Before we're allowed in the mortal world, yeah. But a lot of it takes time and experience.”

“Do you um,” Mark stutters warily. “Do you have much ‘experience’?”

A long pause. The demon shuffles on the spot. The air is filled with tangible tension, telling of how tentative the conversation topic is. “The record player was my first day on the job.”

Things fall into place in Mark's mind very quickly. Donghyuck’s distrust and immaturity, the lack of knowing the precise logistics of material binding, his inability to shift his eye color. The demon he's landed was just as new to all of this as Mark himself was. No wonder the being beside him seemed so familiar yet out of his depth in the mortal world.

“Then I guess we can learn together,” Mark finds himself saying, an easy smile gracing his features. Overcome with an inexplicable need to placate Donghyuck. To wipe the tension and discomfort away from his smaller form.

It works: the demon rolls his eyes with a snort. “Dork,” is the mutter that follows. His tone is almost fond despite the insult. He motions to the packet of hair dye. “I also shouldn’t need that. But our hair starts out red and darkens with age. Eventually mine will turn black.”

Mark’s eyes flick up to inspect the wisps of fiery red hair peeking out from beneath Donghyuck's beanie. The strands visible splay out across his forehead and frame his face like the flickering tongues of a campfire. He recalls the demon's darkened roots, deeper and more subdued in comparison to the ends.

“Soo,” he begins with a drawl. A smirk envelops his features and he raises an accusatory eyebrow. “You're a _baby demon_ then?”

“Oh fuck _off_ ,” Donghyuck replies. They halt their conversation when a middle aged woman makes her way down their isle. The demon keeps his eyes directed _away_ from her yet still manages to glare in Mark's direction.

“In comparison to my friends,” Donghyuck resumes with a whisper-yell when the lady is out of earshot. “ _Yes_ , I’m super young. But not a _child_ you freak, more like a… teenager. Whatever, _I'm still older than you_.”

“Clearly,” Mark replied sardonically. “Because you sure act like it.”

“I’m done with this conversation,” the demon replies. Spinning around to snatch a lens case and cleaning solution off the shelf before strutting towards the counter. Mark has a smile on his face the whole time while paying, and catches a similar one on Donghyuck below prettily pink dusted cheeks.

Navigating the clothing stores were a much more difficult feat than the pharmacy. Most of the things Mark suggested were turned down despite being darker colors like the demon obviously prefers. (“That's too tacky,”, “The material is itchy,” or “Are you sure you can even dress _yourself_ , dumbass?”). It wasn’t lost on Mark that all of the items that faced rejection were decidedly pricey. Eventually, the demon settled on a pair of skinny jeans and a plain black t-shirt, the total coming in at just under $30. It seemed the pair was ready to head back to Mark's apartment when something towards the back of the shop caught the human's eye.

“Wait,” he said, stopping dead in his tracks. “I just need to grab something real quick.”

He found the demon in the same place he had left him, leaning against the window outside the shop. Crimson eyes flitted up from his feet to meet Mark's gaze, then briefly to the additional shopping bag in his grasp.

“Ready now, princess?” the demon goaded, a playful glint pooling in his eyes.

“Yup,” Mark replied, managing to keep his face neutral.

By the time they walked to the nearest station, caught the subway downtown and made the trek to Mark's apartment it was around 4pm in the afternoon. Like a child on Christmas, Donghyuck dashed into the bathroom with his bags the second they entered, slamming the door shut and presumably setting to work bleaching his hair. Mark set the extra shopping bag from the clothing store on the couch and relieved his other arm of the various vegetables he had grappled from the fresh food store before they left the mall. He dumps the contents of the grey plastic bag onto the counter.

He stared at the vegetables, and they stared back. Despite living on his own for several years now, cooking has never been his strong suit. It irritated him because he _tried_ to do his best at it, but anything he attempts ends up turning out charred to a crisp or lacking in flavor or _both_.

Deciding to procrastinate cutting the vegetables for dinner, (because _yes_ , he'd find a way to somehow monumentally fuck that up) Mark opts to check his emails and kill some time running through some schoolwork. Some people, as Johnny has in the past, may accuse Mark of having poor time management skills. But the thing about Mark is that he could have all the time in the world, every moment of every day to rest and revitalize and he would _still_ work himself to the bone. It has never been a matter of not using his time enough, but a matter of using it _too often_. Too often does he spend sleepless nights reading the same passages of his textbooks over and over again to try and absorb new information. Too often does he spend hours meticulously transposing a few minutes of audio just to delete it and start over again. Overthinking has become an old friend of his and he never has the strength to pull himself out of his own head.

The pace and familiarity of work has become like home for him. It allows him to feel in control of things, in control of his _life_. But Mark of all people should know that even the most familiar of places can be a prison.

He is in a way glad that his phone is still sat shattered on the coffee table in the next room. It makes avoiding his mother's calls easier.

Well ‘easier’' is a very lose term. He feels marginally less like a piece of shit now that he doesn’t even have the chance to reject the calls.

With a gulp, he eyes the phone before disappearing into the darkness of his room. It's unlikely he could get it fixed anytime soon even if he wanted to, not with the money he spent today. He flicks the light on and places his backpack next to his desk. When he settles into his desk chair it hits him that today was the first time in seemingly _forever_ that he had gone to the mall shopping. The last time he had been there it was only a quick visit – and even then it was only because Johnny had dragged him out of the depths of his dim apartment to get some hair dye. Back then a gripping feeling tarnished the inside of his chest, making it impossible to enjoy the time away from his work. That feeling never made itself present today. Not with Donghyuck around.  
The fresh taste of watermelon sorbet lingers on his tongue still and he couldn’t recall the last time he had had that either.

By the time the sun had slid behind the horizon Mark had grown tired of editing himself in circles, deciding to try a hand at cutting vegetables. Managing to locate a relatively clean cutting board in one of the kitchen drawers, he hopes silently that the demon likes kimchi.

He had successfully peeled a single carrot when he heard the bathroom door open, followed by soft and hesitant footfalls.

Mark glances away from his work and his breath hitches. He notices two things right away.

One: silvery grey hair _definitely_ suits Donghyuck, especially parted down the middle like that. The subdued color and mature nature of the style is a neat contrast to the brazen locks that once fell unruly down his forehead.

Two: Donghyuck _definitely_ wasn’t as slight of build as Mark had once thought. The black skinny jeans hug the length of his sculpted legs. From the slight curve of his thighs to his strong calves; Donghyuck’s legs are gorgeous. His collar bones are well defined and visible thanks to the black v-neck t-shirt. Mark cant believe he never noticed just how nice his golden brown skin looks.

“What are you staring at?” Mark is shocked out of his stupor, his gaze flicking up to the demon's eyes. Despite the brilliant red being suppressed by the brown contacts, his eyes still hold flames within their depths. Rather than a raging forest fire, the red bleeding through the brown morphed his eyes into molten lava. The natural darkness of his waterline is the color of charcoal.

“Uh,” the blonde stuttered. His mouth feeling as though it were full of cotton wool. “You uh, you look…” He cleared his throat. “You look _good_.”

He hadn’t meant to put emphasis on ‘good’. Wanted to keep it as casual as possible but _of course_ his mouth didn’t fucking listen to him. He expected the demon to laugh at him, expected to be ridiculed for the next five days.

But instead he watches as a pretty blush blooms high on the demon's cheekbones.

“Whatever, loser.” Comes his reply, but there is no bite to it. “I assume I blend in with other teenagers better now?”

If Mark where honest, no. Donghyuck didn’t blend in well with the other adolescents. While not much could be done to hide his fangs, it wasn’t that which made him incapable of being a replica. He was far too pretty for that.

Mark didn’t say so.

“Uh, that depends,” He says, trying to divert the conversation. “How old are you looking to be?”

Donghyuck pauses. “I was eighteen when I died.”

_Fuck_. If Mark could kick himself, he would. To think he could be stupid enough to bring up the one thing the demon seems most uncomfortable about. His face flooded with remorse.

“I'm so sorry-..”

“Don’t worry about it, Hyung.”

That was new. “Huh?”

“I said don’t worry about it.” The demon repeated. Mark was so dumbstruck that he figured he must have heard him wrong. But he had to be sure.

“Did.. did you just call me ‘hyung’?” The blonde boy asked, eyes the size of dinner plates. Donghyuck’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion followed by a flash of recognition when he realized what he had said.

“Well it's better than ‘dumbass’ or ‘stupid’,” he replied defensively, folding his arms across his chest.

“No, no!” The other puts his hands up and palms out. “It's fine, just uh. Caught me off guard.”

Donghyuck's tanned arms fall from across his chest. Mark continues. “Besides, if you’re eighteen then it works because I’m a year older than you… in human years?”

A soft hum was the other's only reply. The pair stand awkwardly facing one another. The bright yellow bag sat on his dingy couch catches Mark's eye. He perks up and makes his way over to it, feeling the demon's eyes follow his movements as he paces on socked feet over to the couch. The soft plastic crinkles as he picks it up and hands it to the other, a wave of nerves washing over him in anticipation for Donghyuck's reaction.

The latter eyes the bag for a few moments. Gaze flicking up to meet Mark's and back again briefly before taking a tentative step forward. He gently grasps the bag, their fingers brushing allowing Mark to feel the demon's warmth. Even now that the slightly puffy bag is in his grasp, Donghyuck still eyes it carefully. A curious glint reflecting honestly within.

Finally, he opens the top of the bag and peeks inside. His right eyebrow flicks upwards cutely as a silent inquiry. While Mark watches the emotions play out on the other's face, he cant help but imagine a kitten exploring a new world of possibilities with careful curiosity.

He gingerly takes the item out of the bag, discarding the plastic and unfolding it. It was an oversized black fleece hoodie, vibrant text adorning the front just above the pouch pocket. ‘SINNERS' in bright red text is scribed across the chest with thin yet bold lettering. The only color that could rival it would be Donghyuck's natural eyes.

Mark watched said eyes, searching for an adverse reaction to the surprise. He saw as Donghyuck assessed the item, reading the text before bringing it close towards his chest. Almost nuzzling it as his eyes grew glassy, welling with an emotion Mark had never seen within them. Panic shot like and arrowhead through Mark's chest.

“I know it’s really tacky…” he begun, trying to salvage the situation once again. “And uh.. and if you hate it I can return it that’s fine. I know I didn’t ask you or anything but uh, but I saw it and thought of you and-..”

“I love it.”

Donghyuck had his eyes closed. Eyelashes fanning over the slight rose to his cheeks. Initially Mark had interpreted Donghyuck's expression as anger, but looking closer he understands now that the expression he's seeing is _gratitude_.

“Ah?”

He opens his eyes. “I know we agreed that I could just keep wearing your jacket but,” The demon brings his eyes from the floor to Mark. “I _really_ love it, I - _thank you_ hyung.”

With how easy it was to make Donghyuck misty eyed over a surprise, Mark has a sinking feeling that the other boy hasn’t been gifted _anything_ in his life. Nothing of his own to show for it. The human knows he shouldn’t feel as happy as he does about this – about bringing joy to a spawn of hell by giving him something of his own to take home. But a small part of Mark hopes that the gift might be something special to remember him by.

“Okay,” Mark says. Almost breathless from nothing at all. “I’m glad.”

The demon slips the hoodie over his head and settles into it. Mark had removed the tags already, not wanting Donghyuck to feel guilty at the price. Granted, it was much more expensive than what he is normally willing to pay for clothes, but somehow the look on the other boy's face (now branded into Mark's brain) made it worth every dollar. Besides once the ghost hunter episode goes live he and Johnny will be getting a small payment for advertising revenue and he will be back on track.

Red and black place well on Donghyuck's body. The hoodie fits him perfectly and the pop of color pulls his whole aesthetic together. Johnny’s Fashion Evaluation be dammed.

“So that's only as far as you got with dinner?” Donghyuck motions to the single lonesome carrot with a tilt of his head.

Mark sputters. “Wh- _oi_ you should be glad I’m trying to cook in the first place.”

A snort. “ _’Trying’_.”

Despite the teasing, despite Mark's rushed confession about not knowing how to cook, they end up working things out very well. They almost abandoned the idea to make Kimchi after Donghyuck had reminded Mark that it took at least a couple days to ferment properly. Opting in stead to make vegetable soup for dinner that night, but Donghyuck had insisted on using the leftover vegetables to place in a jar for Kimchi as not to waste them.

Rather than shooing him out of the kitchen, the demon allowed Mark to help with small and simple things. Never once getting frustrated or angry at his lack of experience. It was an entirely different angle to the demon,: patient and calm replacing his once distant and cautious demeanor. The pair of them maneuvered around the small space with a newfound synergy, inevitably paving the way for the most enjoyable experience Mark has ever had whilst cooking.

They sit and slurp their soup on the couch – a respectable gap between them. Mark fires up his laptop and they resume watching the rest of the second _Harry Potter_ movie while they eat. After having not watched the movies for a good five or so years, the human is slightly lost. Whereas Donghyuck's eyes never stray from the screen.

Except when he breaks the silence.

“Y'know, you remind me of someone,” the demon says, watching Mark out the corner of his eye. His tone is laid back yet there is an air of stiffness still to his posture. It worsens slightly with the next utterance.

“Someone I knew when I was human.”

Mark swallows the remains of his soup, wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin and turns to Donghyuck. His tone is light an airy, a playful smirk gracing his lips. “Was he super handsome too?”

“Ugh,” Donghyuck rolls his eyes, feigned disgust littering his features . Mark bursts out with his first genuine laugh in a while, he watches as the demon fights back a smile of his own.

“No,” the demon teases. His smirk makes Mark put his laughter on hold, the pair holding one another's gaze. “He couldn’t cook either.”

Mark falls asleep that night with a contented smile on his face. For the first time in possibly _years_ he falls asleep early with little trouble. The soft, rhythmic inhales and exhales from the room next door lulling him into a steady dreamless slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me @ myself: do you want og bright red hair or Superhuman smokey grey?
> 
> **  
> _yes_  
>  **
> 
> ALSO funny story I loved haechan's ‘Sinners' hoodie so I looked it up to try and get one but realized that shit was Balenciaga so nahhhh. The one Mark bought tho is just from a generic store in the fic
> 
> STREAM BOOM, STRONGER, ETC. OUR BABIES DESERVE IT~


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things get angsty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up splitting this chapter in two because I wasn’t happy with it. Plus, I hoped a double upload would atone for the angst in this chapter and chapters to come…
> 
> the previous chapter was the last of my pre-written material, so the gaps between uploads might get a lot longer – apologies in advance

Out of all the things Mark hadn’t expected from a creature of hell, their affinity for sweet things takes him particularly off guard. On their way to campus Donghyuck manages to leech yet another cone of ice cream (this time salted caramel) out of Mark's bank account. The numbers now dwindling to a desperate total. None of that entirely matters however, given the placated smile that warms Donghyuck's features. Growing warmer still with every lick of the frozen treat.

Granted, enjoying a sweeter flavor might not so much be a _demon_ thing, and more of a _Donghyuck_ thing.

The walk to Mark's University was colder than average for the season. Each breath they or any of the other commuters take has them exhaling a plume of wispy cloud. While Mark was shivering in his usual jeans, jacket and t-shirt combo, Donghyuck appeared completely unbothered by the cold. The human felt a rush of pride bloom in his chest when he watched the other settle into his new hoodie. That was another thing that caught him off guard: for someone who appeared so cold and calculating when they’d first met, everything about Donghyuck – from his skin, to his eyes to his natural call of ‘ _Hyung_ ’ – is undeniably _warm_.

The bloom of peculiar fondness is now a resident within the cavity of Mark's chest whenever the other is around – that is to say _all the time_. But unlike all the other challenges in his life, Mark hasn’t allowed himself to reflect or think about it. Afraid of the heartache his overthinking habit might cause.

It’s still evident that the demon doesn’t entirely trust the new world around him yet. If the way the boy glares daggers at anyone who stands too close on the subway, or that no matter how still he seems it's guaranteed he has surveyed a room a dozen times within a minute was any inclination. Mark assumes this is due to his immaturity – a lack of that ‘experience’ they had talked about previously. But something itches in the rear of his mind telling him that it likely goes much deeper than that.

_Not that you'll ever find out_ , Mark's mind reminds him. Because it’s more than likely. Given how reluctant the demon has been to reveal even the slightest details of his life. Or well… afterlife. Despite how trusting the demon appears toward him in particular, Mark can’t help but chalk that up to the fact that Mark is the one feeding him. Those thoughts are the ones that chase the fondness back into the far recesses of his brain.

It's difficult though; to try and block the butterflies out. Not when the demon chooses the seat right beside Mark in the lecture hall, or when he laughs whole heartedly when Mark trips up on the uneven sidewalk, and _especially_ not when he uses Mark's arm as a canvas to draw intricate patterns during the entire duration of their tutorial.

But he tries.

They make it home safely and the usual exhaustion that hits Mark around that time never comes. After going to sleep early _and_ sleeping through the night the human feels energized in a way he has never felt after a long day at college. Meanwhile Donghyuck immediately flops onto the couch the second they enter Mark's apartment, melting into the cushions with a contented sigh. Mark makes to head into his room when he is interrupted.

“You’re not _seriously_ going to study more now, are you?” the demon has his head lifted up slightly, the tendons in his neck flexing with the strain.

“…no?” Mark replies. Feeling as though he has just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

The demon exhales sharply out of his nose with a smile. “Don’t lie, hyung. You suck at it.”

Mark rolls his eyes, stepping backwards and away from the entrance to his room. Hearing the honorific from the demon will never get old. The clock in the kitchen tells him at it’s 4:53, and he decides he can afford to take a few hours off – given how far ahead he is.

“We could order takeout?” he suggests. A bored expression tarnishes Donghyuck's face. “And uh.. maybe… we can watch a couple movies?”

The demon's features light up and he maneuvers himself upright to sit on one side of the couch, opening the other to Mark. Upon the sight, the butterflies worm their way around Mark's abdomen. He takes a steadying breath to try and shove them away.

“I'll just borrow the neighbor's phone real quick,” he says, turning toward the exit. “You can start the laptop up and get everything ready.”

Behind him, the demon's molten eyes follow the lines of his back with a pang of concern.

After the food has been ordered and set to be delivered, the pair settle on the couch and begin their first movie of the night. They start out with a notable gap between their bodies, the heat radiating from the demon reaching Mark regardless. As the movie progresses the space lessens more are more. If asked why he gradually scoots towards the other boy, Mark would tell you that it's because the room is getting more frigid the further the sun recedes behind the horizon. That he is simply seeking out the demon's natural body heat on instinct.

However, it's mainly because Donghyuck chose a horror film.

Heart beating rabbit-speed in his chest, Mark slides further and further into Donghyuck's space with each near miss and jump scare. With every yelp from Mark the demon lets out a full-bodied laugh. Clearly enjoying himself at the human's expense. String instruments develop a rising tension once again, a cacophony of muddled high-pitched sounds as the characters trudge down a narrow hall. Before Mark is about to abandon his pride entirely and actually jump into Donghyuck's lap, a knock at the door brings them away from the screen. Both of them jumping at the sound.

“I’m picking the next movie,” Mark says shakily. Standing up to answer the door. The demon pauses the movie, silence flushing over the apartment save for his incredulous snort at Mark’s terror.

They continue the movie whilst eating in companionable silence, their knees knocking together. Surprisingly, Mark manages to make it through the rest of it without pissing his pants but the final climax scares them both so hard that they clutch one another for stability. From there Mark chooses a generic superhero story, neither of them making to detach from the other. Donghyuck’s left leg is thrown over Mark's lap while the blonde boy leans into the demon's side. Mark's cheeks hurt from laughing at Donghyuck's commentary throughout.

By the fourth movie Mark's eyelids begin to grow heavy. His entire right side is comfortably warm, with a bundle of smoky grey hair nuzzling into it. It is apparent with the lack of quips or comments about the mediocre action or cheesy dialogue that the demon is just as exhausted. Eventually, the blonde boy cant keep track of the moving images on the screen, his lead-like eyelids drawing each individual blink out by several seconds. Soon the intervals between his blinks narrow to nil, his laptop's battery running out shortly after.

♤♡◇♧

_Could have sworn it's usually colder this time of year._ Despite Mark's eyes being closed there is a distinctive glow visible through his lids, presumably the sun. His brain is fuzzy with sleep and the entire right side of his body is numb. His neck protests when he tries to turn it and it's so warm in his apartment it almost feels like it – like he, himself – is on _fire_.

Figuring idly that he should probably check, Mark peels his eyes open slightly. Dawn light seeps across his living room, splattering the opposing wall with vibrant orange hue. The human slowly realizes that the reason why it is so hot in the apartment is decidedly not due to a house fire. But rather the furnace occupying the couch with him.

He and Donghyuck are posted on the couch: Mark’s left shoulder pressed right up against the back of it with the demon draped over his entire right side. Mark is on his back while Donghyuck lays still sleeping face down on his stomach. The demon's face is nestled into the crook of Mark's neck, his breath fanning over the blonde's skin with each exhale. Their legs are twined together in a convoluted pattern and Mark is astonished by how well they are able to both fit along the couch's surface.

Mark takes a steadying breath, the sound of it seeming to slice through the otherwise tranquil environment. The feeling of Donghyuck's button nose brushing against the side of his neck has butterflies dancing in the pit of his stomach. He takes a few moments to admire the serenity of the moment before the demon awakens and either makes fun of him for enjoying the cuddling, or scolds him for taking it too far. Mark hadn’t intended to end their movie night sleeping in the same space. And while he feels ultimately guilty for wanting to hold onto this moment for as long as he can, he can’t help himself.

Something shifts and Mark feels a pair of eyes on him.

When he glances down his chestnut eyes meet molten brown. Their faces are so close that Mark can make out faint freckles peppering the ridge of the demon's nose. Said demon's eyes are drooped slightly with fatigue, the rounded edges of his face molded perfectly to the slant of his nose.

They study one another for a moment. Breathing the same air. Before either can register it properly, the demon is inching forward slightly, gradually closing the gap between his plump lips and Mark's slightly opened ones. Their proximity grows so close that Mark can feel Donghyuck's body heat on his lips.

A car's horn blares in the distance. Shocking the demon out of his stupor. He draws back and begins the process of peeling himself away from Mark. Said boy is too busy piecing together what just happened to mourn the loss of Donghyuck's body heat.

No laughter or scolding came from the demon. His face is unreadable as he stands by the coffee table rubbing his eyes. Mark decides he would prefer a snide comment from the other to diffuse the situation. Not the stilted silence now brewing between them. A constricting sensation grips at Mark's throat.

The demon turns to regard the blonde boy. His hoodie had been discarded sometime during the third movie, the black V-neck shirt hanging haphazardly off his tanned shoulder. Finally his expression shifts into one Mark can recognize: curiosity. Yet the usually talkative demon never utters a word.

Feeling tingly from the scrutiny and disoriented from the strange awakening, Mark arises from his place on the couch. Shuffling past the demon and pacing to the bathroom over the cold floorboards. He could feel eyes following his every move until the door closed behind him. His reflection in the mirror is something he has never paid much mind to. The black hollows below his eyes a constant reminder of the toll his lifestyle has on his body.

He splashes water onto his face in the hopes of clearing the cobwebs from his brain. Taking the almost-kiss between he and the demon surprisingly well all things considered.

That _is_ what was about to happen, right?

Things fall apart very quickly when he exits the bathroom.

The demon had abandoned the couch in favor of filling two bowls with cereal, avoiding eye contact with Mark. His face is sheet white, body ridged like a fawn ready to bolt at the slightest noise. Behind him, the clock balanced precariously on the kitchen counter reads 12:37pm.

Mark's stomach drops. It was Wednesday: his first and only lecture of the day finished half an hour ago. The second hand keeps ticking as if it were mocking him. The demon blocks his view of the clock, the two bowls balanced in his grasp.

“ _Shit_ ,” leaves Mark's lips before he can stop it. Nausea gathers below his ribs, his mind races as he calculates just how much content he could have missed.

Molten eyes snap up from the bowls. The colorful cereal creating a rainbow swirl in the milk. As if by a sting, Donghyuck's shoulders draw upwards. A frown clouding his face.

“…What?” his tone is accusatory.

Mark rolls his eyes, his own lack of foresight frustrating him to no end. “Missed my lecture.” He pushes past the demon, not registering the breath hitching in Donghyuck's throat. The human is about to reach his room before the demon speaks.

“It's just one lecture, hyung,” Mark halts, the demon’s voice starts off small but grows with the next utterance. Turning his head to stare Mark directly in the face. “Who cares?”

Mark cant believe what he's hearing, everything is too loud and too quiet at once. His heartbeat is so quick in his chest he thinks it is milliseconds away from bursting out of it. He is unable to register the hurt expression on the other's face, his mind too preoccupied trying to comprehend how to handle his first time missing a lecture.

Perhaps in a different circumstance, perhaps a different person more capable than himself might have been able to rationalize the situation. Donghyuck was right. It was only _just a lecture_. But after working as hard as he has, after the hours of time he has poured into every dimension of college, the last thing on his mind is the fragility of the current situation.

“ _I_ care, Donghyuck,” his voice is so much colder than he expected. Matching the frigid environment outside. “But I wouldn’t expect _you_ to understand.”

Mark feels dizzy as he watches Donghyuck's gaze morph from delicately cautious to a wildfire of emotion. His upper lip lifts to a snarl.

“You’re right,” his voice now dripping with venom. “I don’t fucking understand, _asshole_. You lock yourself up in that room for hours on end and the _second_ you allow yourself to enjoy the life you've got you throw it all away? You barely _eat_ , barely _sleep_. And can’t even see for yourself that there's people out there who care about you. Guess it makes sense now considering how far up your ass your head is.”

“Oh save the theatrics,” Mark rolls his eyes. The demon dumps the bowls on the counter. “How would _you_ know any of that?”

“I thought you where different,” the glint of his fangs flicker with every sharp word. “Turns out _all_ you humans are the fucking same – you can drop the act now by the way. You don’t have to pretend you don’t hate me any longer.”

The tears start welling in Donghyuck's eyes at the exact moment Mark's mind clears. The human's chest burns with guilt as he watches the demon's defenses crumble right before his eyes. His own nasty words replaying over and over again in his mind.

“Wh..wait, Hyuck I-…” _I'm sorry_.

He reaches out to try an stop him from walking away. Donghyuck flinches at his hand. The blonde watches helplessly as the demon ducks his head and paces to the couch, curling up on its cushioned surface and bringing the blanket over his body. Not stopping his movements until the entirety of his small form is burrowed beneath it.

The frustration about missing his class dissipates, melting away the static in Mark's brain and allowing him to think clearer. _He thinks I hate him?_ Mark reflects back on the fun they'd had yesterday afternoon, their banter between classes. They had come so far along only for it to be ruined by his pigheaded tendencies. He puts missing his lecture aside for now, wanting to try and salvage this relationship. What even where they? Friends? Frenemies? Perhaps ‘two guys who got coincidentally cursed together who eat ice cream and apparently cuddle’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

Mark approaches the bundle, taking as much caution as if he where closing in on a wounded animal. The way Donghyuck had uttered the word ‘hate’ replaying in his mind.

“Hey,” the blonde coos. His voice soft in stark contrast to the ice cold way it had previously carried throughout the apartment. The lump didn’t budge, reminding Mark of a child hiding from a parent.

“Hyuck?” the human would be surprised by how naturally the nickname falls off his tongue, if not for the fact that he were focusing on keeping his tone steady.

This time there is movement. But only so that Donghyuck can burrow somehow deeper under the blanket.

“I… I don’t hate you, okay?” Mark kneels before the couch, getting as close as he can without the demon pulling away. “I was scared of you at the start, sure. But I never hated you. I… I’m sorry if I ever made you feel like that.”

There was a pause. The bundle shifted slightly, but not inwardly. The blanket shifted as a result of what Mark assumed was Donghyuck de-coiling a minute amount. He continued.

“I overreacted – I wasn't mad at you just-..” a frustrated sigh. “I’ve never- I don’t _like_ when I’m not working or trying my hardest. It makes me feel... just… _shitty_ and out of control of my life – and I _know_ that's lame and not an excuse but… it's just what happens.”

A muffled sniff from beneath the blanket.

“That being said…” he continues. “Getting to know you, spending time and having fun with you has been… honestly? _Really_ cool. I’ve needed to loosen up and get my.. “ _head out of my ass_ ” for a while. And like, if you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a loser so I basically only have literally one friend and he's got his own life which is, it's whatever like…”

He trails off on his ramblings when a head peeks out from under the blanket tentatively. Donghyuck's hair seeming to sparkle when it catches the light. Mark feels his heart break even more when he spies the red rims surrounding his molten eyes. The demon's face is cautious, his mouth a thin line bracketed by his lower lip jutting out slightly.

Mark tilts his head at the sight, bringing his face slightly closer and sighing inwardly when it meets no flinch. His voice is still low. “I’m really sorry.”

Be it that Mark's speech was just _that_ heartwarming, or that the demon could read the guilt in the lines of Mark's forehead and the biting of his lower lip (or both), Donghyuck eventually peels himself slowly out of his shell. Discarding the blanket and taking an upright seated position on the couch. His legs crossed in front of him. He takes in a deep, steadying breath, meeting Mark's gaze.

“I’m sorry too,” he breathes. Mark accepts the apology with the whisper of a smile. Mirroring Donghyuck with an inhale of his own, he feels the tension in the room wash away with the subsequent exhale. Suddenly, he recalls the bundle of fliers collecting dust on his desk in the next room.

“I think I know how we can spend the rest of today,” he suggests. The demon tilts his head.

“What about… your lecture?” he questions. “Or your assignment?”

That familiar gripping sensation tries to manifest deep in Mark’s chest at the mention of both, but he stamps it out with another deep breath. “I'll live.” He replies simply.

“But-..”

“ _Seriously_ , Hyuck,” he stresses. “I’m already pretty far ahead in my lectures anyway, and I still have _weeks_ to finish my assignment. We only have a few more days to spend with each other.”

It was the first time either of them had mentioned their time constraint out aloud. While Mark regretted saying it- making him feel like they were tragic lovers doomed to an untimely end – it helped him convince himself that it was _okay_ to let go. It was _okay_ to live the life he has been given.

Before Mark can analyze the effect of mentioning their time limit on Donghyuck, the other boy's face is cracking with a wicked grin. “What makes you think I wanna spend time with _you_ , dumbass?”

Mark rolls his eyes playfully and Donghyuck lets out that beautiful giggle Mark’s been longing to hear since their tiff started. The demon continues. “So what's the plan, hyung?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DO NOT sleep in contacts
> 
> also who even cares about sunset/sunrise continuity in a fic about forming a bond w a supernatural being *sweats*
> 
> I’m really sorry this chapter is such a mess – writer’s block is a bitch :/ you _will_ start to get some answers about Mark and Haechan's backstory in upcoming chapters.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a date!??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE this was a double update so if you haven’t read chapter four yet I’d advise circling back :D
> 
> **WARNING:** mention of blood at the very end

‘The Plan' was inspired from a flyer that had been occupying space on Mark's desk for the past week. The human leads Donghyuck to the subway station and they board a train taking them to another station downtown. Rather than the gloomy gray skies of previous days, only a few clouds litter an otherwise perfectly blue sky. The temperature outside still warranting a light jumper or hoodie, but nothing like the frosty reception Mark was expecting.

The pair had showered and munched in tandem on the cereal Donghyuck had prepared (though, after their spat it had developed into more of a rainbow sugary mush but Mark was bereft of complaint). Each of them had dressed comfortably for the afternoon: the human in a grey t-shirt, coral blue hoodie and his jeans from yesterday, and Donghyuck donning his favored black hoodie over his usual dark attire. Mark could feel the excitement buzzing from the demon in waves the closer they got to their destination – the sea breeze making Mark glad he had opted for that extra layer of clothing.

The distinct salty scent in the air gets stronger the more blocks they cover on foot from the station. Mark leads them past various cafés, markets and other vendors until they reach the harbor. Nestled right at the farthest corner of this downtown district, forming a salty basin from which jobs, tradable goods and tourism flourish.

They pace the length of the promenade, passing several swimmers braving the cold to test the water lazily lapping at the sand. With the low tide, the water is about a yard away from the paved footpath. The sand between the two sports both a variety of exotic seashells and the occasional sand-blubber crab traversing its darkened terrain. Mark doesn’t miss the way Donghyuck stares in awe at the grainy surface from where they pace along the footpath.

Finally, they reach their desired destination: a carnival running along the length of Pier 13. They had been advertising its arrival for months and Mark had disregarded it completely.

Until now.

Donghyuck's brown eyes glow alight when he spies the carnival. Several rides and attractions line the sides of the pier: most notably of all the Ferris Wheel. The wooden surface of the pier is crawling with life and laughter. Children run along it with their friends trying to snag the prime front row seat of the shark-themed roller coaster. High schoolers sit huddled on the bench seats in hoards, snacking on buttered popcorn and bright pink cotton candy. Various other age groups mill around the carnival including Mark and Donghyuck as they try to get their bearings.

“So,” Mark says as they pass someone posing for a photo with a pride flag. “What do you wanna do first?”

The demon surveys the stalls nearby, dark eyes honing in on a pink and white striped cart towards the end of the pier. He licks his lips. “I wanna try some of that stuff,” he motions to the cotton candy vendor. “But we might be too full afterwards so can we go on _this_ first?”

Mark follows his slender finger to find it pointed at the entrance to the shark roller coaster. The line is sizable due to the time of day but not enough to deter Mark. He nods his affirmation and they venture to the end of the line.

It was evident that the human _drastically_ underestimated the roller coaster. Upon face value, the ride had appeared quite tame – a fun little attraction for kids and families. But once he and Donghyuck were seated in their carriage (third row rom the front) and the lap bar was being clicked into place, Mark's stomach felt like it was going to drop out of his ass.

The coaster barrels its way along the rickety rails. Weaving in and out of stalls and over the heads of other carnival-goers. Donghyuck smiles and laughs with a shrill pitch the whole time and Mark feels green, what with the sharp turns, abrupt drops and the sudden stop somewhere along the way. While meandering down the peaks Haechan lifts his hands off the handles, his light form almost lifting out of the seat. Mark's voice reaches a pitch he wasn’t aware he was capable of.

Both of their throats are slightly hoarse when they reach the end, Mark feels like he had just ran a marathon with the amount he was sweating beneath his layers. The demon was evidently faring much better, given the grin plastered over his features. He teased Mark about it the second they breached the final step off the ride and out of the gate. The demon firing sass and playful insults his way as a result of the adrenaline high they’re both feeling.

Getting cotton candy was decidedly more tame than the roller coaster. Watching as Donghyuck experiences new sensations through sight, taste and smell will never get old for Mark. However, watching the other try a mouthful of wispy spun sugar might be his favorite reaction yet. Initially, his rounded face warms at the sweetness, only to be overshadowed by confusion when the tuft of fluffy texture melts in his mouth into small sugar crystals. His nose twitches cutely and his eyes burn alight. Each time he plucks more from the paper cone, the cycle is repeated. His journey to the base of the cone is almost as turbulent as their previous roller coaster experience.

While Haechan finishes the rest of his cotton candy, the pair meander their way throughout the carnival. The scent of cheap hot dogs and popcorn wafting across the pier. The demon stops suddenly in front of a stall while Mark was preoccupied trying to find a trash can.

“Hyung,” comes his distant call to Mark's left. The human turns to see Donghyuck's gaze fixated on a blue and white pavilion, an old game of horseshoe set up beneath the awning and various small stuffed animals lining the rear. “I'd like to try this, please.”

“Okay,” Mark replies, fishing a few scant dollar bills out of his pocket. He palms them off to the demon and they approach the attraction.

The bored-looking high school kid running the stall levels Donghyuck with a look of disdain. Cocking his hip, the demon meets his green eyes sharply and holds out the cash. With an eye roll the teen takes the money, gesturing vaguely to the game. There is yellow duct tape across the wooden surface of the pier, about six meters away from a pointed metal spike with colorful rope wrapped around it. In stead of steel horseshoes, five rubber rings of varying color are thrown haphazardly on the ground by the tape. Donghyuck needn’t ask how to play, stepping up to the line with his shoulders relaxed in an air of confidence.

“How many does he need to make to win?” Mark asks the employee. He was sure the teen didn’t hear him until he finally lifts his gaze from his phone.

The boy shrugs and Mark has to will himself to not roll his eyes. “All of ‘em.”

Mark's hope sinks in his chest. Most of the carnival games are rigged anyway- so even if the goal _seems_ simple, nobody would be able to do it. But making all the rings? That in and of itself is impossible. He should tell Donghyuck not to bother, should remind him that not all people are honest and that he shouldn’t be upset if he doesn’t win. The inexplicable need to protect Donghyuck's feelings arises again, bubbling within him. He is about to turn around and stop Donghyuck – fueled by the vision of the demon's heartbroken face from earlier today – when said boy's voice cuts through his overthinking.

“I'll take that one,” the smirk is audible. Mark glances in the direction of it to see him back with the high-schooler, pointing vaguely at one of the several stuffed animals hanging at the back of the tent. When the teen goes to pluck Donghyuck's selected prize off the wall Mark looks at the spike, all the rings stacked at the base of it at varying angles.

_He actually made it??_

Mark could kick himself for missing it. The demon turns with a smug grin, stuffed animal under his arm. The teen looks as confused as Mark feels as they walk away from the tent. Still internally struggling with the fact that Donghyuck actually won, Mark doesn’t notice how the demon hesitates slightly, looking from the stuffed toy then back to Mark again. The human halts his internal struggle when he feels a warm hand on his arm.

They slow to a halt and face one another. The demon sucks his plump lower lip into his mouth, stalling a little. A dash of pink highlights his cheekbones, ducking his head slightly so his ashen bangs fall over his eyes. Eventually, as if finally mustering up the courage, he thrusts his hand out to shove the stuffed animal into Mark's chest.

“You can keep it,” the demon's voice is low, pointedly not looking up at the taller. “As a ‘thank you', or whatever. He reminded me of you.”

Mark takes a hold of the bundle, the fur is golden brown and indulgently soft. He recognizes the fawn body and brown mane of a lion, his eyes are open cutely and his paws are puffy white mittens.

_’He reminded me of you'_. Mark felt his face heat up, matching the blush marring the demon's own face.

“Thank you, Hyuck,” a crooked smile graced the human's features. The demon's gaze finally lifting from the floor to regard him. Butterflies erupted in Mark's stomach when Donghyuck's molten brown orbs flitted to linger on his lips.

“Whatever, he looked lonely trapped in there.” His eyes snapped back up to Mark's, referring to the tent Donghyuck had rescued the lion from. Mark never claimed to have a favorite animal before; but with the soft bundle cradled in the crook of his arm, lions were shaping up to take the number one spot.

Sunset was beginning to paint the harbor’s skyline with a pale pink hue when the pair hit up their last stop of the day. While waiting in line for the Ferris Wheel the yellow lights that line the steel frame flashed to life. LED lights atop each carriage casts them in a variety of bright colors. The rickety metal seat is cold when Mark makes contact with it, but with Donghyuck at his side he is warmed up almost instantly.

During their slow ascent, Mark has a lot of time to reflect. Deciding that now is a good time as any to finally evaluate how the demon to his right makes him feel.

He thinks back on the butterflies, the way the demon makes him blush, the way the blonde has grown accustomed to casually referring to Donghyuck as ‘cute’, how determined Mark is to protect the other. To make him _smile_. He couldn’t tell when exactly he went from just housing a demon in his house for a week, to having _Donghyuck_ , the cautious, endearing boy with a smile that could rival the sun.

Regardless, he's here now. He enjoys the time he spends with the demon way more than he should. Maybe even _likes_ him in a way he definitely shouldn’t.

It’s not because Donghyuck is a boy. Mark had already had that whole liking both guys and girls crisis around when puberty hit at 15. But the fact that they’re literally _days_ away from sending Donghyuck back to hell, and they’ll never see each other again.

Mark’s chest burns at the thought. _That's new_

“Thank you for not sending me away, hyung,” the demon's nasally voice sounds almost distant with how lost in his thoughts Mark was. Donghyuck keeps his eyes on the scenery and Mark takes the opportunity to study his profile. The burning sensation grows hungrier.

The demon let’s out a sigh beside him, they’re nearing the circle's peak: the city skyline to their right and the gentle waves of the harbor to their left. The streetlights of the darkening city reflect in Donghyuck's dark irises.

“When I realized I couldn’t break the binding until the old lady came back I freaked,” he continues. “My last memories with humans where… _awful_. Honestly I expected _you_ to be awful too. Which is why I immediately tried to bargain with you – I’m sorry about that… by the way.”

He pauses. Mark thinks he is going to leave it there, but doesn’t interrupt. He is still gazing at the demon when he turns to meet his eyes. The demon's expression is somber, yet a small smile still graces his lips as he tries to hold himself together. Mark’s arms ache to embrace him. To tell him he doesn’t have to hold himself alone anymore.

“I guess…” his voice is a whisper, fangs only just visible. “What I’m trying to say is. Of all the people in this mortal world I could have been cursed with I… I’m glad it was you.”

Mark takes a hold of his warm hand as if drawn there to rest like a magnet. The gesture in an of itself – let alone the fact that the demon allows it – is enough of a ‘I’m glad it was you, too' for the both of them. Neither of them speak for the rest of the ride, just enjoying the picturesque horizon slowly painting the city orange and pink. Their hands stay connected, too. Both of them content to just exist in the same space for a moment.

The short walk and subsequent subway ride was equally as tranquil. Mark could feel the heat on his palm long after they had dropped their hands. As if Donghyuck's fingers had branded the human's skin.

Things went south once again when they reached the door to Mark's apartment.

Honestly, Mark should have known something would go wrong.

An overwhelming sensation washed over him as he attempted to insert his key in the door. He tried and failed three times to do so as the wall and ground beneath him seemed to lurch and sway. A sharp burning sensation erupts behind his eyes – something akin to a migraine and it has him reeling. He braces himself against the door with a groan.

“ _Hyung…_ ”

The voice was distant, but undeniably strained. _Does he feel this too? Why is he hurting as well?_

Before he could get any answers, a warm substance fills his nose. Flooding his airway so he _couldn’t breathe_. Panic grips his esophagus rendering it unable to intake air or make a sound. He looks down at his pale blue hoodie to see it stained red. Thick, sticky crimson is dripping from his nostrils.

With wide eyes he turns his head to glance at Donghyuck. The demon is doubled over in a similar state: only with a viscous black substance running from one nostril onto his lip. Mark's wide eyes meet Donghyuck's hazy ones, the demon's stained lips move and Mark only catches one word.

“ _Shit._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for making it this far ♡


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING** : mention of blood at the start and several times throughout

“ _Shit._ ”

Mark was afraid to breathe, for fear of inhaling the blood pouring from his nose. His eyes burned at the lack of oxygen. The spasm behind his eyes worsens by the second, burning and throbbing as if someone were tearing the tissue and grey matter there. The world reels around him – despite trying his hardest to focus on Donghyuck's face.

The demon braces himself against the nearest wall, staggering forward toward Mark. The hand Donghyuck rests on the human's shoulder does little to calm him. Mark's mind is a mess of questions and muddled confusion. _What's going on? How do I stop this? Should I try and get my neighbor?_

_Am I dying?_

Black spots veil his vision. His chest _burns_ for air.

He vaguely notices Donghyuck advance forward again, closing in on the door by Mark. The demon swipes his thumb over the black ooze on his own lips, smudging it onto his chin. Time moves in slow motion as Mark watches the demon draw a symbol on his front door below the lock with three sure swipes of his shaky thumb. The shiny substance transfers an inky black slick onto the door in the shape of crescent moon with a broad diagonal stripe through it. It eventually seems to melt into the dark brown grain of the door, the edges of the symbol glowing red then fading to charcoal. The shine mellows into a matte black brand below the gold lock, smoke tickling the edges of it slightly.

All of it grows very hazy as Mark feels his legs give out from the strain. In stead of hitting the floor he feels himself being jostled and dragged after a series of clicks and curse words. The stuffed lion beneath his arm is replaced by a warm sensation and Mark thinks death feels a lot like a hug.

♤♡◇♧

He dreams of an afterlife filled with water. The azure depths enveloping his body and dragging him under. The water whispers by his ear, telling of unfulfilled promises as he falls deeper and deeper. Any will to fight the current is drained from him and the warmth soothes his aching muscles: quelling him into a sense of security that is neither false nor otherwise. His eyes close as he surrenders himself to the fall.

♤♡◇♧

The human’s eyes snap open with a gasp. Blessed oxygen filling his chest along with relief. He minds his surroundings in a haze.

He is lying on his couch, stained hoodie hanging from his withered form. Nothing blocks his airways, though he can feel blood caked below his nose with the twitch of his lip. While his head is fuzzy he feels no sign of the sharpness behind his eyes that once plagued him. A grassy fragrance fills his nostrils with each inhale.

Relief washes over him when he spies Donghyuck, approaching him with caution and attempting to subtly check him over. He carries a cup of warm tea, presumably from Mark's dismal collection of T2 samples. The black sludge that once fell from the demon's nose is decidedly absent – making Mark question if it were there at all.

Donghyuck sets the cup on the coffee table, pausing to study Mark again. “You look like shit,” his voice is a low rasp, a gentle smile gracing the plumpness of his lips.

Mark snorts, the action causing a slight ringing in his ears. He winces regretfully. “Thanks.”

The demon nudges the tea towards Mark, who sits up and takes it gratefully. The warm water soothes the roughness of his throat and he lets out a sigh as the contentedness settles in his bones. Along with the relief, the haze over his thoughts clears slightly. He looks to the demon, who had perched himself on the coffee table and was watching over him carefully.

“What happened?”

That was the question. What happened? Among others: Why did any of that happen? _Did_ any of that actually happen? Mark was confused if any of it was real or if all of this is just an elaborate dream conceived specifically to mess with him.

Donghyuck's molten eyes drop to the floor. He shifts uncomfortably on the coffee table and his easy smile dissolves from his face. While silence permeates through the room, the demon's eyebrows draw together.

“Hyuck…?” Mark prompts gently. Immediately molten brown eyes meet his own, though Mark couldn't read what was brewing in their depths. Perhaps a mixture of uncertainty, guilt and fear or a variety of others.

The demon inhales but it stutters, seeming to catch upon entry. “I'm sorry, Mark-Hyung,” Donghyuck looks so small, seeming to be drowning in the black tee that once was sculpted to his figure. He wrings his hands. “I didn’t mean for you to-… I should have been sure that I-…” Mark had never heard the demon speak in such a fractured manner, always direct and to the point with his speech.

“Breathe,” Mark reminds him, leaning forward to rest a hand on the demon's shoulder. The effect of his touch is immediate: the worry lines melting away from his tanned skin, his breathing evening out with a few deep breaths. Donghyuck might have lent into the touch but Mark might also have been imagining it.

The grey haired boy seems to sober slightly, once again able to look Mark in the eye.

“We need to get to that record player,” he says. “We might not have as much time as I thought.”

Mark was no stranger to deadlines – had stared many in the face directly. But somehow the mention of _time_ now irks him the most. Because _of course_ this deadline is now the most pressing matter in his life. _Of course_ something happens now which in turn acts as a catalyst to wearing down the time they have left, _just_ as he was beginning to grow content with living his life to its fullest potential. An unsettling feeling reels in his stomach.

“What do you mean?” Mark asks, dropping his hand from Donghyuck's shoulder.

“I _mean_ that me being away from the record player is what caused it,” Donghyuck rubs his temple. “I knew I was getting weaker and weaker the longer I spent away, but I didn’t expect it to take such a toll on _you_. That shared migraine nose bleed thing must have affected _both of us_ because of your connection to me. They'll only get worse the longer I stay away from the record player.

“They hurt more for you because you’re a mortal, plus you have a soul so it could be trying to siphon energy from that. We need to break both the curses pronto before you… yeah.”

It was a lot to take in. Mark feels that he should have noticed Donghyuck's deterioration more – rather than worrying about carnival rides and stuffed animals. Donghyuck had also been very vague about the record player in the beginning, dodging the subject in lieu of what Mark had _thought_ was either distrust or a genuine lack of knowledge. He feels miffed that the demon had withheld such information, but scolding him for it wouldn’t prove nor fix anything.

“Wait so…” he says in stead. “That black stuff coming out of your nose was your _blood_??”

The demon looks taken aback. “Well… yeah? I guess? That’s seriously all you got from that?”

“Uh,” Mark was, admittedly, slightly overwhelmed. It’s not everyday that the demon you’re cursed with (the cute, cuddly demon who likes sweet things and carnival rides) tells you that an unseen force is trying to tear your soul apart from the inside. Let alone the fact that he is already mourning the loss of time that breaking the curse with the demon entails. “Wait… why did the migraine stop?”

Donghyuck tilts his head. Mark feels neither dead nor soulless, so why are they both still here?

“I put a ward on your door,” the demon explains. “Before we both blacked out I was able to seal the apartment and carry you inside. I didn’t think it would be enough to ward off the curse, but it was worth a shot. Obviously… it worked? But it wont hold for long.”

“My landlord's gonna be pissed,” Mark says, without really thinking. There's a pause between them before Donghyuck realizes he is joking. They both laugh together for a moment. “So if we step out of the apartment, the migraine will come back?”

The demon nods.

Mark scrunches his nose up. “We need to leave to get back to the old lady's house though.”

“Hm,” a thoughtful sound. The demon looks around the room as if he will find the answers there – and apparently he does, too. Because his eyes flash with an idea. “I might be able to transfer it onto something smaller: something compact and personal to you that you can carry around. It wont let me duplicate it, but we might still be able to be protected by it outside.”

The human wracks his brain for a suitable item: something lightweight and portable that wont be conspicuous for someone to carry. His eyes land on his phone, screen still smashed to pieces lying lifeless on the kitchen counter. His joints pop in protest when he hauls himself up, limping his way over to the device and procuring it for Donghyuck to scrutinize.

“How's this?”

Donghyuck takes the cold brick from the blonde, flipping it over in his hands and studying the surface. The glass on the back is relatively untouched, a few scuffs and smudges marring it but the majority of the impact was braced by the front.

“I’ll try,” he replies finally, pacing to the door. Mark watches as he carefully pries the door open, thankful that it opens inward. The ward is still perched beneath the lock, black charcoal below glistening gold. Donghyuck kneels and brings the brick up to meet it, placing the sigil just below the camera on the back face of the smartphone. The world seems to hold it’s breath as Donghyuck closes his eyes, his face straining slightly as Mark assumes he focuses his energy into transferring it from wood to glass. Mark really hopes nobody walks down the hall past his apartment.

The demon’s nasally voice sounds foreign when it twists itself around a Latin phrase, the syllables falling from his tongue easily. The words are followed by a series of hissing and crackling sounds between the door and Mark's phone, the demon keeping it in place all the while muttering softly an incantation with his eyelashes fluttering over his cheekbones.

The hissing subsides, bringing a wave of silence with it because Donghyuck stops mumbling. His eyes flicker open and Mark glimpses a _fire_ within them quite unlike anything he has seen before. Though, the physical toll the feat has had on him is visibly evident, what with his sagged shoulders, half closed eyes and ashen face. Mark thinks it’s fitting that the fires burning in Donghyuck’s irises only grow hungrier the weaker his physical being gets. If it weren’t for the contacts subduing the color, the demon's eyes would be the most red they’ve ever been.

Said demon lets out a long sustained breath and removes the phone from the door. The dark oak grain is no longer crosshatched with a brand as the sigil has taken seat on the back of Mark's phone. Having shrunk slightly in order to fit on the smaller surface, the insignia stands out in stark contrast to the silvery grey metal beneath the top layer of glass – seeming to have penetrated both.

The pain Mark was anticipating never came, his nose remaining free of blood and his head at a loss for the distinctive sharp burning sensation characterized by the migraine. And judging by the lack of black liquid pouring from Donghyuck's nose, the transfer must have been a success.

After inspecting his handiwork for a few moments, Donghyuck hauls himself off the floor and hands the phone to Mark. He shuts the front door with a strain to his muscles he thinks Mark doesn’t take note of.

“Hopefully that buys us some time,” he says. Mark flips it over to the other side, his face being split into a thousand different fragments in a web-like formation. He notes the time and assumes it must be around dusk the next day.

“I have a free track today,” he notes, pocketing the phone for good measure. “We can go ask the old lady's landlord if he can open the apartment again? Plus I should probably get my screen fixed.”

An incredulous eyebrow raise. “I’m not too good with technology but I’m pretty sure it's more than the _screen_ that's busted on that thing.”

“Oh shush.”

They quickly eat and get ready to face another day, neither of them seeming to rush despite the fact that they definitely _should_. The human tells himself that it’s due to the lingering grogginess of the migraine – and _not_ because this could be his last day with Donghyuck.

A stab like a searing hot iron erupts in his chest at the thought.

The walk to the landlord's office (his address printed on the back of an old business card Mark had received upon his first time meeting him) is filled with excuses. Donghyuck's fatigued form struggles to keep pace with the human's strides like they once could, so Mark tries his best to fall into step with him. They end up dragging a 10 minute journey out to at least double that, meandering their way through the busy streets and subway stations.

Mark's phone sigil was evidently holding up extremely well, what with the lack of dizziness plaguing the human's vision and the demon eventually being able to at least have the energy to _pretend_ he's fine again. He is standing straighter but grows rigid by the time they’re out the front of the landlord's agency.

They pause at the tall glass door for what seems like hours. Eventually finding one another's gaze and holding it there for a few moments. Mark thinks he would swim in the depths of Donghyuck's molten gaze for eternity if he could.

But that's the thing: he _can't_. They don’t have eternity to spare.

He exhales a shaky breath. “Let's go,” leaving his lips awkwardly in a surprisingly chipper tone despite the dread seeping in his bones. He mentally prepares his lines as they approach the secretary’s desk.

Spoiler: the answer was a resounding _no_.

Despite how short he is, the landlord is just as intimidating as Mark remembers: leveling them with a glare the second his secretary sends them to his office. The human stutters over his words more than usual, barely able to string a coherent sentence together but the reception is all the same. Ironically, the landlord's excuse (along with the vague mention of a client privacy policy) was that he didn’t have _time_ for this. Did have _time_ to open the apartment so Mark could ‘collect a forgotten piece of equipment’. He sent them on their way with a meaningless “have a nice day" and Mark wanted to scream.

“What happens now?” Mark ask, rounding to face Donghyuck after he hears the front door click behind him. They’re stood out the front of the agency on a relatively quiet side street of a downtown suburb, a few cars amble past which is just enough to create a slight stir in the otherwise still air.

Donghyuck gives a noncommittal shrug. “We could break in.”

The blonde sputters and Donghyuck ‘s teeth flash with a laugh. “Kidding,” he assures. “Today is Thursday, yeah? The old lady gets back Saturday so hopefully the ward holds up until then. If it doesn’t well… we might have to reconsider that ‘breaking in' idea.”

Mark thinks that this Donghyuck is a complete 180 from the frantic, guilt-stricken one from this morning. But perhaps both of them are more comfortable living on the edge now. It’s not like they can do much else about it.

To him, living ‘on the edge’ is worth it just so he can see Donghyuck's smile a few more times before they part.

“Where do you wanna go today?” Mark asks him, Donghyuck's entire being seeming to perk at the suggestion. The human half expects the demon to bring up Mark's school work again, to which he plans to give the excuse that it's his day off. However, he doesn’t get the chance.

After thinking for a moment, looking to the side and shuffling his weight on his feet, the demon meets his gaze. “Back to the beach?”

Considering they were already downtown, the harbor was only a quick subway ride away from the landlord's agency. They placed along the fisherman's wharf for a while, just taking in the sights and sounds. Ships and tugs bobbed their way through the water, the waves lapped at the sand of the foreshore and gulls gathered around the picnic areas. Today was what Mark would later discover the warmest day of the season in comparison to the average temperature.

Before braving the sand the pair go to a small seaside café where Mark gets an Americano and Donghyuck sips diligently on a Frappuccino. The waitress brings out a cookie for Donghyuck that had m&ms for eyes and a chocolate smile (which in turn also brings a smile to the demon's face). The café isn’t terribly busy and the atmosphere is calm and cozy.

“Who do I remind you of?” Mark hadn't meant to voice the question out aloud so abruptly. The calm environment and domestic vibe to their outing makes the human want to get to know the demon better. Said being looks up at him with a mouthful of cookie, eyes wide and curious with his head tilted slightly.

“Hmf?” The human rolls his eyes with a smile.

“A while ago you said I reminded you of someone you knew,” he elaborates. “I was just curious – you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

Mark expected to be shut out, for the demon to recede back into his shell and close off all information. But recognition instead floods his features, eyes warming with a small smile gracing his lips. He finishes his mouthful and hums, looking off into the distance in a similar manner Mark has seen his grandma do when reminiscing old times.

“Lee Jeno,” the name falls fondly from his lips, however it feels as though Donghyuck hasn’t said those syllables in ages. His eyes find Mark's. “You and him are quite similar. You're both so smart but also.. kinda dopey-"

“ _Oi_.”

Donghyuck giggles, then continues. “He was really innocent, too – like you. Always wanting to do the best he could. Always watching out for everybody else. We… uh..”

He clears his throat, shifting on the chair. Mark is about to remind him that he doesn’t have to keep talking about it – noting the past tense and the mist clouding the boy's eyes. But he powers on. “We grew up in an orphanage together. I uh… _surprisingly_ didn’t mix well with the other kids, Jeno was really the only one who could tolerate me. I don’t think I would have survived for as long as I did in there without him.”

Mark nodded in understanding, because there really wasn’t much else he could do. “He sounds awesome.”

The demon shrugs, looking down at where he had started picking at his fingernails. “Never saw him again after I died. Which I guess is a good thing – would’ve been pissed if he had ended up in hell.”

Donghyuck finished his cookie and they head for the beach, his mood instantly inflating the closer they get to the water. The usual grey clouds that plague the city skies this time of year are absent, gracing them with the full effect of the sun – however minute. It was warm enough to roll the bottoms of their pants up, but still cold enough to warrant the use of a hoodie in the shade. If you closed your eyes and basked in the sunlight, you could almost imagine you were lying on the sand of an exotic beach.

Apparently Donghyuck had never seen the ocean up close before.

He approaches the water's edge with caution, Mark trailing behind to stand next to where they had abandoned their shoes and jumpers. The demon halts just before the grainy white sand turns to a dark brown where the waves wash up at varying intervals. He stares for several minutes, observing how the grains shift and sway with the slight force of the water, foam gathering at the tongue of the waves. Just as the twelfth or so wave recedes back toward the horizon Donghyuck steps forward into the wet sand, his feet dislodging the grains and causing an imprint. A small wave brings a rush of foamy water pooling at his feet and between his legs, presumably folding the sand over his feet and causing him to sink. As he dislodges them the demon cranes his head around to look at Mark flashing him the biggest smile that just about knocks the breath out of his chest.

The cycle repeats a few more times before the demon gains the confidence to move around while the waves come. Inching his way further and further away from the shore. Mark has to stop himself from groaning when the waves breach the hem of his rolled up jeans, not phasing the demon in the slightest. He runs his tanned fingers through the next wave before turning around and walking back to shore, grinning at Mark wickedly in a way that makes his stomach sink.

“Hyung~” Mark takes a step back, almost toppling over due to how unaccustomed he is to the uneven surface.

“Hyuck?” the demon gets about four steps away before reaching out with grabby hands. Mark bolts.

They kick sand up in their wake as they run along the span of the beach. Mark almost stumbles a few times and expects Donghyuck to be the same but the demon sprints along the sand as if he were born to do it, catching up to Mark before he pivots and barely escapes the demon's clutches.

He's out of breath by the time he gets back to their belongings, Donghyuck hot on his tail. Finally there are tanned arms circling his waist – an undignified screech leaving his mouth as he’s jostled toward the water's edge. He barely manages to take his wallet and phone out of his pockets, holding them above his head when they reach the wet sand. Donghyuck’s chest is glued to his back as he carries Mark into the ocean, the human noncommittally attempting to wriggle out of his hold. The water is freezing when it hits his feet and by the time Donghyuck is knee deep Mark's shrieks carry across the wharf.

Donghyuck's genuine glee-filled laughter rings in his ears and Mark lets out one final yell when the water crashes into his stomach. Satisfied, the demon lets him go, pacing backwards to shallower waters to admire the human's shivering form before returning to the shore. It takes Mark a few minutes to get used to the temperature and eventually heads back too, glaring at Donghyuck and lifting his white t-shirt away from where it sticks to his torso. One might have mistaken Mark for an ocean creature with his vengeful gaze, but Donghyuck ensures to voice his opinion that the human resembles a drowned rat.

Without a towel between them it was a very sticky and chafing walk to the outdoor showers. They manage to rinse the sand off their feet and the salt out of their clothes, opting to try and dry off on a park bench overlooking the harbor in the sun.

“Do you have any other questions for me?” Donghyuck asks, lying length ways across the bench seat with his feet propped on Mark's thighs. His neck is bent at an unusual angle due to the armrest but had insisted he was fine, having grown comfortable in the midday sun.

“I.. guess?” Mark replies, one arm resting on the opposite armrest and the other perched atop Donghyuck's shins. “What's hell like?”

The demon snickers, as if he knew that would be the question Mark would ask. “Full of dead guys,” he says. “We call them ‘wanderers’ because that’s pretty much all they do. Just the lost souls of the dammed who wander the endlessly expansive plane of existence. They don’t interact with demons much, and aren’t much for conversation so I usually stay away.”

Mark nods, attempting to imagine a lifetime of wandering. He thinks that perhaps that is all a select few people do before death, pacing aimlessly from one non-place to another. The thought terrifies him.

“On the outskirts of hell there are structures. When I first saw them I thought they were giant spikes or pyres. But they're really similar to the buildings of your city actually, demons inhabit them when they aren’t on an assignment. We live in a small group of about five or six – we call it a ‘hive’.”

Donghyuck sits up and shifts on the wooden bench, scooting over to lay his head on Mark's thigh in stead. His silver hair splays out over the dark blue denim of Mark's damp jeans, the demon's right leg hangs off the seat. Donghyuck keeps his dark eyes on the horizon when he continues.

“We had five demons in our hive,” he doesn't flinch when Mark absentmindedly runs his fingers through his soft silvery stands. “Doyoung-hyung is the most fun to rile up - he's kinda like the mom of the household, always losing his shit whenever we leave things lying around. I guess I’m closest with Taeyong-hyung. He was the first one I met in hell: he took me in and taught me the ropes. I don’t say it often but I’m grateful I met him. Besides, he's got an absolutely gorgeous face - Doyoung-hyung says it's because he was once an angel that got banished from… the other place. I tried asking him about it but he says he doesn’t like to talk about it. Then there's Taeil-hyung who's like, the oldest demon I know of so he's just tired pretty much all the time.”

“What about the fifth one?” Mark asks after a lighthearted snicker. He gently careens his blunt nails on Donghyuck's scalp, the demon closes his eyes contentedly.

“He’s out on an assignment for a while,” the boy yawns. He leans into Mark's touch and his breathing slows, the human decides to leave the questions for now in favor of studying Donghyuck's resting profile bathed in the sun.

The demon sleeps for about fifteen minutes before their clothes are just about dry. Mark suggests they find a place to eat and get his phone fixed before he starts to get sunburnt. The demon nods idly, rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his newly donned hoodie.

The mall downtown is much smaller than the one by his campus but Mark isn’t one to complain. Donghyuck seems to be doing better with the smaller volume of people. They drop Mark's phone off at the repair place, hoping to whatever being willing to listen that the sigil still works when he palms it off to the technician. Thankfully, in the short time away from it nothing happens: no nosebleed, no migraine and no being struck by lightning (or however it goes in the movies). Nothing happens save for the technician muttering “cool sticker,” when he hands Mark's repaired phone back to him.

They opt to hit up the food court for a lunch so late it might as well be considered dinner, sitting facing one another by an indoor fountain. The afternoon sun casts a reflection of water rippling on the side of Donghyuck's face from a window overhead. Mark's phone buzzes three times throughout their meal, the boy tensing each time before checking the notification.

Donghyuck looks like he is about to comment on it when suddenly a small being bounces up to him. They both glance to see a little girl – maybe six or seven years old – stood next to the demon. Her auburn hair hangs in pigtails over her pinafore as she sways slightly on the spot.

“Hi,” Donghyuck greets, his voice surprisingly sweet and gentle. He rescinds slightly when a woman comes rushing up behind her, her hair is messy and she is panting slightly.

“Sorry!!” she says to the both of them. Then to Donghyuck. “My niece told me she _loved_ your hair – I turned around for one second and _zoom_ she was _gone _.”__

Mark chuckles knowingly at her story, observing the way Donghyuck carries himself around the child: leaning down to her level instinctively, warming his features and talking in a low, sweet tone. “Really?”

The child nods rapidly, her long hair jostling over her shoulders. Donghyuck reaches out to gesture to it. “I love your hair too,” he replies. “It's so pretty!”

Her eyes widen before sending him a massive grin, but suddenly her face falls. She frowns and looks to the floor, shifting her weight on her feet similar to the way Donghyuck does. “People at school pick on me for it,” she mumbles. “Says it’s ugly and dumb.”

“Well…” the boy replies. “I think it’s cool. My hair used to be a similar color y'know?”

She snaps her eyes back to him, her face lighting back up with wonder and disbelief. “ _Really_?” she whispers in awe. The silver haired boy nods with a smile which morphs into a look of shock when the girl rushes forward to embrace him.

There’s a few moments of panic that Mark experiences while Donghyuck looks to him helplessly. Each millisecond that ticks by feels like hours as the silver haired boy flounders. The panic subsides when the demon finally relaxes, allowing her touch and even returning the hug with lose arms. The girl thanks him and skips away with her tired aunty, the pair of them waving as they exit the mall. The demon is more contented than ever as they resume their food, the two of them leaving the mall themselves in order to be home before sundown.

“Can I ask you a question?” Donghyuck breaks the silence once they’re off the subway and walking the streets back to Mark's apartment. The human nods his ascent and Donghyuck continues. “Why do you get so freaked out about phone calls?”

A sigh leaves Mark that's only loud enough for him to hear. He figures it's only fair he answers the question, given how much Donghyuck had shared today – opening up age old wounds for him and trusting Mark with the information. The human swallows around the lump in his throat.

“S'kinda a long story,” he replies, the demon flashing him an open ‘try me' kind of expression. Mark clears his throat. “I freak because I expect it to be a call from my mom – which sounds bad but like… well, I guess it kinda is. I’ve been avoiding her calls since I started college. Not out of spite or anything just… I don’t wanna disappoint her.”

Just like Mark had done, Donghyuck nods silently to let him know he's listening. The silence prompts him to explain further.

“Nobody in my family has finished college: my mom had me young and had to raise me on her own because my dad split. She got a new boyfriend when I was around 10 years old and he's… not the best. When I told them I was gonna finish high school he laughed in my face but I still did it. Mom came to my grad and she was so, _so_ proud of me. I wanted to make sure I could make enough money to, you know, help her out in life so I told them I was gonna go to college to study music and make it big.

“He basically told me that if I wasn’t going to go out and get a ‘real' job then I had to get the fuck out of his house. We fought about it and before things got physical mom told him to back off and fought him about it… in the end I agreed to just leave. It would be easier on her if I just left, so I did.

“She rings almost every other day but I _can't_ bring myself to face her. I’m terrified that I’ll disappoint her for leaving and having not made much progress in my course. I just wanna work the hardest I can so she might be able to have a better life, you know? Figured maybe after a while the shame will get easier to manage.”

Mark hadn't realized that sometime during his speech Donghyuck's hand had linked with his own shaky one, their fingers threaded together like pieces of a puzzle. He only notices this once he's done and they’re approaching the stairs up to Mark's apartment. They pause before the stairs, palms linked as they stare at one another. The demon is oddly quiet but Mark can tell that he is silently piecing together the details of Mark's story. The blonde boy doesn’t feel as bare as he thought he would after laying all that out: rather feeling a sense of calm and ease settling in his once murky and constricted chest.

“Thank you for telling me that, hyung,” Donghyuck says sincerely, the blonde smiles.

“You're not gonna try and bargain my soul in exchange for passing college?” he jokes with a smirk. The demon appears confused for a brief second before wincing, presumably remembering their rocky first meeting when he had tried to con Mark out of his soul. The demon snorts light heartedly despite the weight of his next words.

“You're well on your way to passing on your own, hyung,” he assures, Mark's heartbeat picks up at the praise. The demon looks to the side for a moment, seeming to debate something before speaking up again.

“And besides, your soul is worth more than anything I can give you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this chapt was so dialogue heavy – I hope it all makes sense!
> 
> also hi I’ve never personally summoned nor been cursed with a demon before so all the technicalities are made up buuut hopefully they at least kinda work for the sake of the story. Thankyou for reading :3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING:** strong implications of past suicide, abuse and non/con involving a minor. Also underage drinking if you squint.
> 
> This is extremely dialogue heavy and deals with some really dark themes so feel free to take a break from it whenever you need to. Grab a blanket and a snack even.

The following day was the last full day they could spend together.

Mark had never favored Fridays like the rest of the world seemed to. Every day, regardless of its position within the week, had been used to better his future since Mark had started his education journey. His mother would try and get him to take weekends off to join a club and be a ‘normal’ kid (though, she would never phrase it like that). But Mark knew that soccer, arcade games and consoles all cost money – a resource they barely had. So he opted to stay hauled up in his small bedroom running through formulas: drowning in textbooks and self-proclaimed expectations.

This Friday in particular however, Mark didn’t want to end.

It was clear that after the human had sprouted his sob story Donghyuck’s conscience was clouded with guilt. He didn’t propose they go out anywhere or do anything special for their final day, even _suggesting_ that Mark should study – to catch up on the things he missed because of time spent with the demon. The silver haired boy followed Mark silently around campus, as if he were merely a shadow. He went back to keeping himself occupied during tutorials – drawing idly on scrap paper rather than bothering Mark, and never distracted the blonde during his lectures.

Mark found the shift extremely odd. Like a switch head been flipped in the demon's mind reverting him back to factory settings. While the silence during his tutorials as he frantically read or edited his coursework was usually welcome, he found it disconcerting and uncomfortable. Like his skin was crawling with tiny bugs. He wanted to call the demon out on it, to tell him that he wasn’t a burden. But he was afraid that acknowledging the shift would only make Donghyuck draw back even more.

So instead, after getting back home from university, he lays out his best clothes onto his bed.

The demon observes him over his bowl of rainbow cereal. He is stood in the doorway of Mark's room, eyebrows creasing with every item dragged and thrown from the human's closet. Mark couldn’t help but feel like the demon was watching him like he were a zoo animal; brows furrowed and head tilted with intrigue.

“I gotta ask,” the silver haired boy says finally, leaning against the doorframe. “ _Why?_ ”

Mark admires he pile he’s made: a small smile on his face and his hands on his hips. He turns to regard Donghyuck, heart skipping a beat when he finds the demon already looking at him, he clears his throat. “We're going out.”

A pointed eyebrow raise. The subtle expression change is enough to make Mark reconsider his decision. “Uh only if you want to like.. it's cool if you don’t-..”

“Go out _where_ , hyung?” his tone wasn’t annoyed or angry, just exasperated.

“Um,” Mark stammers. “I uh, got invited to this party ages ago.” He paces to his desk, sifting through the various previously forgotten event posters and invites. He holds up an A3 poster for the college party – one that went out to presumably everyone on campus.

“I was planning to just ignore it and not go,” Mark digresses. “But I figured… since you’re here and everything… maybe we could see what it's like?”

His tone lilted toward the end, inferring the hope he felt that the demon would agree. Both of them could use a night out to spend together and forget their deadline for a while, but Mark was also aware that it was a risk to suggest something so far out of both their comfort zones.

“If it's boring, can we leave?” The demon asks.

“Yeah,” He says breathlessly. “Yeah, of course we can. We can come back here and watch movies.”

This seemed to please the silver haired boy, a smile warming his features. One that knocks the breath from Mark's chest, he blames it on anticipating the party to come.

“So… what are those for?”

The demon was referring to the clothes. Mark made a small noise of ascent and walked back over to them, he then opened and outstretched his arms toward his bed in a grandiose manner.

“Take your pick?”

Despite having come home around 4, and the party not starting till 8:00, the pair still ran out of time getting ready for it. By the time Donghyuck had sorted through his options (Mark's three plain button up shirts, one pair of plain black slacks and two jackets) the human realized that this might be more difficult than he thought. The only dress shirt Donghyuck seemed to like was a black button up with small blue pinstripes running vertically along it's surface. However Mark never wore it because the hem was so long that it came to the middle of his thighs, turning him into a walking rectangle. The demon tried the pants on and promptly threw them out of the bathroom with a resounding “No" because they were long and baggy. The only winner of all their options was Mark's old leather jacket, bought for him by Johnny for his 19th birthday.

Donghyuck had stood in Mark's room examining the clothes for a good fifteen minutes straight while Mark picked out his go to outfit for special occasions: plain black slacks and a plain dress shirt (his white one, considering it’s the least likely option to be chosen by Donghyuck). Mark had come out fully changed when Donghyuck ran past him, slamming the door behind him as he disappeared into the bathroom. The only items he had managed to catch a glimpse of were dark.

Mark put on a pair of pointed toe dress shoes and let the hem of his pants fold over them, the slight heels click on the tiled floor of his kitchen as he gets two servings of vegetable soup out of his freezer. The second one had just finished in the microwave when the door to the bathroom opens.

The blonde boy is hit with a bout of déjà vu as Donghyuck steps out of the bathroom - this time dressed in mostly Mark's clothes. The demon had opted for his own black fitted jeans, sculpting the length of his legs like they always have, but tucked into them is Mark's black and blue striped button down. Mark has never thought to tuck the shirt in before, always thinking it would make him look even more dorky than he already does. But on Donghyuck it only accentuates his waist and makes his jean clad legs look like they go for miles. His leather jacket hangs off his shoulders nicely and adds the perfect amount of edge to the outfit.

When he glances above the collar of the shirt, Mark's throat goes dry. Donghyuck had obviously raided his minimalistic jewelry collection, a thin black velvet choker resting around his neck in contrast to his honey gold skin.

He swallows thick around the lump in his throat. The demon holds his gaze, the charcoal of his waterline much more pronounced than it naturally is.

“You look good,” Mark admonishes genuinely, echoing the sentiment when Donghyuck had first tried on the clothes they had bought from the mall. Only this time, it wasn’t a strained and stilted tone. Mark was sure of himself, fully aware of what he was saying.

This seemingly takes the demon off guard, a dusting of rose covering his cheeks. Mark wonders idly how the demon can still blush if his blood is black, but the demon's next words cut him off.

“Didn’t expect you to be the kind of guy to have one of these,” he says, laying his hand delicately over the choker. The sleeve of his shirt falling down his forearm with the motion.

Mark gulps. “Johnny hyung's boyfriend bought it for me as a joke,” he replies, scratching the back of his neck. Its then that the demon seems to take in his chosen outfit for the night.

“You’re gonna be cold,” he states matter-of-factly, dragging his molten eyes up and down his attire. “And _don't_ tell me you’re seriously gonna wear that _abomination_ of a suit jacket. It doesn’t even go with your pants.”

Mark pulled the second batch of soup from the microwave and stirred it, pouring it into a clean bowl. He pushes both of them towards the end of the counter before Donghyuck paces back into Mark's room. He was prepared to leave Donghyuck to his own devices and his wardrobe at the demon's mercy when a gasp permeates throughout the apartment. Panicking, Mark races to his room only to find the silver haired boy smirking at him, coat hanger in hand.

“Hyung~” he coos, the sound of it making Mark's stomach drop. “Why didn’t you tell me you had _this_ in your collection?”

The human's eyes widen when he glimpses the red, white and blue sequined jacket draped over the hanger: the sequins glinting in the light above their heads. He hadn’t seen that jacket in years, it having made its way to the back of his closet ( _where it belongs_ , Mark thinks). Red and blue sparkles pepper the ceiling, some of them reflecting in Donghyuck’s irises.

“I uh, bought that a long time ago,” Mark says, in lieu of an actual answer. The smug grin on the demon's face only grows when he hands the hanger out to Mark.

 _He wants me to actually wear it_??

“Duh,” the demon says, alerting Mark to the fact that he had just said that out loud.

“Wait so,” he takes the hanger from Donghyuck. “My suit jacket is an ‘ _abomination_ ’ but this gets a pass? _This_??”

Donghyuck bites his bottom lip, Mark following the movement, he flicks his eyes up in time to watch Donghyuck do the same. A pleading look floods his expression. “Please, hyung?”

And either because Donghyuck truly is a _demon_ \- meaning his powers of persuasion are fine tuned - or Mark is just that _weak_ for him, the human finds himself boarding the subway clad in a red, white and blue sequined jacket.

(The latter, for sure.)

♤♡◇♧

By the time they had finished dressing, found shoes for Donghyuck and ate dinner it was 8:30. The party was just starting to find its pace when they breached the steps of a student accommodation building just south of Mark’s college campus.

The human felt slightly out of his depth, what with the loudness of his jacket paired with the makeup on his face. Donghyuck had managed to convince the blonde boy to allow him to smudge some eyeliner on his waterline, some power on his nose and a slight hint of pigment on his eyelids. Despite it being such a slight change, Mark almost didn’t recognize himself once the demon had finished and allowed him to look at his reflection. Though he will admit while stood next to Donghyuck he couldn’t help but think that they made a striking pair.

The party was spread across the whole of the apartment complex – including the downstairs common area and the backyard garden, which had been decorated with twinkling string up lights. Mark was aware that these kinds of parties went down on the regular – especially the ones inhabited by older students. He was suddenly glad that his apartment was so far out from campus.

Before he has time to get overwhelmed by the amount of people already there, a hand is grasping his own. He looks down to find Donghyuck practically glued to his side, their fingers intertwined while heavy bass permeates throughout the building. The contact coupled with a steadying breath is enough to anchor Mark to reality, leading the demon through a jumble of partygoers through to the common room.

Once there he recognizes a tall figure stood at a cooler full of beer: _Johnny_. He is clad in fitted pants and a charcoal button down with the sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms, leaning casually against the wall. He makes easy conversation with another senior that Mark knows is Jung Jaehyun, one of the hosts of this particular party. It's Johnny's boyfriend who sees Mark first, detaching himself from the taller man and strutting up to them with a sway of his hips.

“Long time no see,” the shorter boy says, flashing his famous brilliant smile. A denim jacket cinches his waist and his heeled boots are higher than some girls would dare to wear. “How have you been Mark?”

“Not bad, Ten-hyung,” Mark replies. The blonde boy knows Ten is just as surprised to see Mark at the party as Mark is to see him here. Back when Ten had just started out at college Johnny had exposed him as quite the party animal – that being how the pair had met in the first place. But since then his pediatrics major stepped it up and has been kicking his ass so it’s rare that he ever has a weekend off.

Mark notes the bottled water he is nursing in his right hand and concludes that perhaps he doesn’t have the whole weekend off after all.

Johnny mumbles some passing words to Jaehyun and the pair share an elaborate handshake before the taller departs. He throws his arms over Ten's shoulders and smiles placidly before addressing Mark.

“Hey dumbass, cute jacket.” Is his greeting and Mark can hear Donghyuck snicker beside him. “Heard you broke your phone.”

Johnny removes one hand from Ten and glides the other to the smaller man's trim waist where it rests. Ten leans into the raven haired boy's side.

“Maybe he just didn’t want to talk to you,” the brunette shrugs. His feline gaze drops to where Mark's hand is connected with Donghyuck's and a wicked smirk envelops his features. “Besides, it looks like he’s been kinda busy.”

Mark tenses, suddenly keenly aware of the warmth against his palm. He makes to loosen his grip, to try and preserve Donghyuck the embarrassment by dropping his hand. But the demon subtly flexes his fingers, squeezing Mark's hand in a way that the human just _knew_ translated into _’please don’t let go'_. He keeps their fingers intertwined.

“Uh,” Mark stammered. “Actually I dropped my phone but uh.. guys this is…”

He pauses, awkwardly scrambling to think of a family name which he _apparently_ should have though of sooner. He figures his own is common enough to remain inconspicuous.

“This is _Lee Donghyuck_ my friend from uh… Canada. He’s visiting for a while, we uh, we go way back.”

Very suddenly Mark felt as though he were introducing a new friend to his parents. Johnny and Ten watched on as he stumbled his way through that mess of an introduction, a bemused smile sweeping across both their faces.

“Hyuck, this is Johnny and Ten-hyung,” he gestures to them respectively with his free hand. Johnny's smile turns into a patient one.

“Hello _Lee Donghyuck_ ,” he greets, mimicking how Mark had said his name. The demon lets out a giggle and Mark prays that Johnny doesn’t say something embarrassing. His hyung holds his hand out casually. “S'nice to meet you.”

Mark is surprised when Donghyuck shakes Johnny's hand. “Likewise,” comes his polite reply. Then a smirk, giving Mark a sideways glance. “And ‘ _Haechan_ ’ is fine.”

The human couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping, recalling the demon's words when they had first met. ‘ _My friends call me Haechan_ ’. Donghyuck hadn’t allowed Mark to call him that, and he and Johnny had only _just met_?? _What does he have that I don’t?_

His hyung had always been a people person: liked, approachable and flirty. Many people on campus knew him and he was friendly with all his lecturers. The blonde had never thought that he would ever be jealous of Johnny, but somehow he had managed to win even _Donghyuck_ over. He couldn’t help but feel slightly miffed about that.

 _Donghyuck isn't_ yours, _he's allowed to like other people._

Ten was introducing himself while the blonde collected his composure, closing his mouth and stopping his thoughts before they became too toxic. After Ten had complimented Donghyuck's necklace, Johnny announced that he and Ten were going to hit up the dance floor, but _not_ before offering both of them a beer. Mark accepted gratefully and Donghyuck politely declined, a smirk still in place after his little stunt. The hyung’s disappeared from the common room in search of the dance floor, leaving Donghyuck and Mark in the quiet space.

The human leant against the counter and sipped his beer, the bitter substance making his nose burn which he promptly ignored. He felt Donghyuck's eyes on him, observing his movements as he sipped.

“Your friends are nice,” comes a nasally voice to his right. Mark glances his way to find his smirk is finally gone, leaving only an open and genuine expression on Donghyuck's features.

Mark can only hum in agreement before he has to pull his gaze away, the grim jealousy creeping it's way back into his chest.

“Hyung,” the demon placates. “Are you sulking?”

Mark shifts uncomfortably. “So what if I am?”

He hears Donghyuck laugh the way Mark personally favored most: unbridled and full bodied. Then suddenly there’s a warm sensation sleeping through the sequins of his jacket. He glances up to find Donghyuck stood close in front of him, almost caging him in against the counter with his face close enough for Mark to see his freckles. The air around Mark turns stifling due to the proximity, and an easy smile envelops the demon's features.

“I honestly suggested it to see how you'd react,” he digresses. “Gotta say, I didn’t expect you to take it so personally.”

Donghyuck laughs breathlessly and Mark's face heats up. The blonde brings his arm up to scratch the back of his neck, his limbs suddenly feeling gangly and useless. He regards the cracks in the tiled floor beneath his pointy shoes.

“You should know you can call me ‘Haechan’ by now,” Mark regards him suddenly in surprise, observing the demon's cheeks to be painted a rosy hue to match his own. “But ‘Hyuck’ has kinda grown on me, too.”

A warmth blooms within Mark's chest, replacing the cold dread that had settled there. The feeling has a small smile tugging at his lips despite his best efforts to stop it. With a newfound courage, Mark speaks up with confidence, his eyes flicking down to the demon's lips for only a millisecond.

“Dance with me?” He tilts his head to the side, jutting his chin out slightly. “Please?”

He expends all his energy into replicating Donghyuck's pleading look: softening his gaze and peering at the demon through his lashes. He watches as said demon's Adam’s apple bobs with a gulp, the silver haired boy trying his hardest to school his expression. Molten eyes flick down to the grimy floor with a slight shrug, before trailing their way back to meet Mark's.

“You dance?” he asks with a quirk of his brow after seemingly minutes – even if it were only a few seconds.

Admittedly, _no_ , Mark doesn’t dance. But he hopes that what he lacks in skill he can make up for in enthusiasm.

The human doesn’t need to say that, thankfully, the demon seeming to read as much during the pregnant pause following his question. A patient smile graces his full lips and he folds Mark's hand within his own, reversing their previous roles as the silver haired boy leads him through the apartment to the dance floor. Mark's beer sitting abandoned on the counter.

They find it in no time – Donghyuck presumably only having to follow the reverberations of synths and the incessant chattering of drunk college kids. Mark didn’t really pay any mind as to _how_ Donghyuck lead him there, focusing rather on the warmth against his palm and the demon's previous words.

Mark realizes, when they’re jammed in the middle of a sea of moving bodies, _just_ how far they've come. Not only has Donghyuck improved in leaps and bounds in the case of his seemingly innate hatred of humans, but he has helped Mark overcome some fears, too. While Mark could still use a couple of reminders to take a break, drink water and head to sleep at a healthy hour, he is infinitely less uptight about needing to fill every waking hour with something he _thinks_ is productive. He has improved on his overthinking habit in favor of just allowing himself to _feel_. He knows this for sure now that he's a hairsbreadth away from his chest being flush with Donghyuck's; the demon’s arms looped around his neck and his own hands resting on his waist (after having been guided to make home there by Donghyuck himself). He knows this for sure as they sway in tandem to the beat of the music, finding that Mark possesses a natural rhythm and affinity for timing as evident by his course major. He doesn’t have to analyze the heady bass or rhythmic synths drifting from the speakers. It was just himself, Donghyuck and the music, there was nothing to overthink about any of that.

Long gone was the closed off and defensive Donghyuck of five days ago. The Donghyuck who made assumptions first and asked questions _never_. The pessimist who would rather consume a soul than be stuck in the mortal world for longer than necessary. Spending a few days in the presence of Mark's innocence had renewed the demon's world view; allowing him to open up and trust at least one human again. Mark had watched him experience new tastes, smells and feelings which has in turn shifted how Mark initially viewed demons. He thinks, perhaps, Donghyuck might now possess more humanity than many other people Mark has encountered.

He _knows_ for sure, when he glimpses a breathtaking carefree smile gracing Donghyuck's lips, slightly breathless from dancing and eyes hazy with the low lighting, that the demon is still _far_ too pretty to fully blend in with the other humans.

Suddenly it’s too hot in the room, Mark’s chest constricts unlike anything he has felt before. He leans forward into Donghyuck's space. The demon doesn’t shy away from him as Mark tries to speak over the music.

“Can we go outside, please?” Even to him his voice sounds distant, but Donghyuck nods in agreement. The human is thankful that Donghyuck seems so attuned to him. He drags his hands down the length of Mark's arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake despite the radiant heat constantly being projected by the demon. A sure hand grasps Mark's own, lifting it from the curve of Donghyuck's waist and leading him out the back door where a small patio acts as a landing before the pavement turns to grass.

The white noise of the party shuts off into a muffled state when Mark closes the sliding glass door behind him. It’s as if an airlock has been closed on the chaos in contract to the serene silence of the backyard.

On any other day the backyard wouldn’t be much to behold. But tonight with the string up lights rivaling the stars and the lawn freshly cut it almost resembled a utopia. The whole backyard is about ten feet wide along the backside of the apartment, with a depth of about six feet. To the left of the stairs there’s a small raised rectangular garden bed housing a wooden screen with creeping vines and lights cascading down its surface. A few people are huddled around a portable heater to the right of the stairs, leaving the garden bed open. Donghyuck leads Mark to rest at the foot of the vines, the wooden edge of the bed is cold upon first contact.

They had dropped their hands in favor of leaving a comfortable space between them, their knees knocking together and anchoring Mark to the present. The music inside had switched to something low and heady, and the faint voices of the few people already outside faded away as the pair stared up at the stars.

The tightness in his chest mellowed but Mark was confused. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was necessarily a _negative_ feeling, the one that usually manifested in the face of a high stress situation. It behaved similarly though, growing less violent the more deep breaths he took. But it would only bloom again whenever Donghyuck so much as shifted slightly beside him.

“I need to tell you something, hyung,” the silence is broken when the demon speaks. His voice is gentle but assured, as if he had been thinking of saying something for a while.

Mark hums, still basking in the starlight.

There's a pause for a moment while the demon takes in a deep breath, speaking again on the exhale.

“About my life before I died.”

The human's breath hitches, his attention snapping to the silver haired boy immediately. His chestnut eyes widen when he grasps how serious Donghyuck is about this, his head shakes slightly.

“You.. you don’t have to-..”

“I want to,” Donghyuck interrupts, reducing the blonde boy into an astonished silence. “I… _fuck_. I _need_ you to know.”

Mark swallows before shifting on the ledge to face Donghyuck fully, giving him his undivided attention. He gives a small nod and Donghyuck trains his molten eyes on the city skyline just barely visible over the wooden boundary fence, between the neighboring buildings.

“I spent the first few years of my life growing up in an orphanage,” He begins, his voice carrying across the small space between them. “It was… fine I guess, nothing particularly great but nothing really _bad_ either. I still don’t know what happened to my parents, if anything. None of us did. But at least I had Jeno – we watched out for one another and made sure things weren’t completely boring. We used to try and guess what our family would be like if we got adopted: how long the mother's hair would be, would the father have a moustache, would they already have kids of their own. Jeno said that he wanted a cat.” Donghyuck let’s out a fond whisper of a laugh. “Said he didn’t mind what the family was like so long as they had a cat.”

The silver haired boy shifted on the ledge, frowning at his hands where he had started to pick at the skin around his nails. “I never got to say goodbye to him before I got adopted. They didn’t tell me I was leaving until these three men came to pick me up. I always prided myself back then for being smart for my age, but there’s only so much a ten year old can predict, you know?

“The place they took me to wasn’t a family at all. I was one of about seven other kids they had there – they kept us in a basement beneath a shop front. We weren't allowed to speak to one another, and the only time we would see the sunlight was when a man came down to throw dinner scraps at our feet. I had watched as sometimes one of the other kids would be taken out and up stairs, but never knew where they were going.

“Someone must have decided it was my turn to go up and out there, because eventually I met the orchestrator of it all. He asked me to sing – our orphanage used to hold plays and concerts, I figured maybe he had seen me performing in those. So I sang for him.

“I became his favorite after that, he would invite his friends over to show me off and I would sing for them. Soon enough he would sell me out to wealthy people to sing at their parties or events. If I didn’t perform well enough I was punished. He kept me fed enough to keep from thinning but not enough that I would have the strength to run away.”

Donghyuck had started to tremble, Mark placed a hand on his back to steady him. The human doubted he could feel much through the thick leather but even just the soft pressure lessened his state. Mark kept his hand there and began to rub soothing circles across the span of the boy's back.

“There was nothing I could do to fight them, nowhere I could go to get away. I had it so much easier than some of the other kids in that basement, but it was still a fucking _awful_ way to live. I snooped around his collection of books when he left me alone in his office once. Ended up finding a super sketchy old book with a pentagram symbol on the front of it. I stole it and one of the other kids said that you could summon a guardian Angel with it. I was eighteen at the time but I was still so, _so_ naïve. I would have done anything to get away from it all.

“I used the book and ended up summoning a demon, whom I thought was my guardian angel. He said I wouldn’t have to do it anymore if I sold my soul to him… so I did.

“Should have fucking known better.

“Because the parameters of our bargain weren’t specific I was at his mercy, in stead of helping me he.. he took my voice away. Made it so I could hardly _speak_ let alone _sing_.”

His voice broke on the final word, arching his back so his chest forms a concave while the brings his legs up on the ledge to hug them. Mark paused with his hand on his back, unsure if his touch was welcome anymore. However Donghyuck shifted toward him slightly, and Mark leant forward to cradle him with one arm. They stayed there for a few moments while Donghyuck recovered his composure. Finally, he seemed ready to continue, bringing his face out from where it was buried in the crook of his elbow. He lowered one leg from the ledge, keeping the other one propped up to rest his arm on top of it.

“After that I was no longer useful to _him_ ,” a grim expression clouds his features. “He… said if I couldn’t continue to make him money with my voice, then my body will have to do. He.... fuck. He tried to take my innocence first himself before anyone else could get to me. I fought him then: kicked and scratched and bit with everything I had left and when I tried to scream nothing came out. He was livid afterwards, after eight years of him telling me how beautiful I was, how lovely my voice was I became _nothing_ to him.”

“Did,” Mark starts tentatively, his voice rough from not having used it for so long. His eyes stung as he held back tears. “Did he murder you?”

Donghyuck chokes out a bitter laugh. “I wouldn’t have wanted to give those assholes the satisfaction of physically killing me too. Would rather have died than become a plaything for them.” His molten eyes meet Mark's chestnut irises for the first time since his story begun. “So I ended it.”

Mark's heart fell at the thought of Donghyuck, so young and naïve, hauled up and imprisoned by the darkness of his own thoughts. No one to confide in, no one to ease his pain and the harsh reality of human brutality haunting his every waking moment. Mark wants nothing more than to hold the grey haired boy and never let go. If not just to relieve him of his pain for a small fleeting moment.

“Because I had been involved in a demonic contract I went to hell,” Donghyuck continues. “Usually souls who end their own lives go to the afterlife as a _Shinigami_ – or a ‘ _Grim Reaper_ ’ or several other terms depending on the folklore region. _But_ because I had no soul they didn’t know what to do. Usually in cases like this the being turns into a bottom feeder hellspawn – a ‘husk' as we call them. They dwell in the sub terrain below hell and occasionally come out to torment souls once in a while. They’re mindless, ravenous, violent and just generally _awful_ to try and deal with. That's when Taeyong came into the picture.

“He pitied me for having been scammed out of my soul and dying so young so he cut a deal with the higher ups. Somehow, they agreed to make me a regular demon instead, saving my sorry ass from an eternity of emptiness. That's how I’m here today.”

The human was speechless. He knew that Donghyuck was strong but he hadn’t realized just _how much_ the boy had endured.

“The reason why I’m telling you all of this,” Donghyuck said, once again turning to face Mark directly. He clears his throat. “During my final years in the mortal world I had been used and exploited by humans. It was all I could remember when I was told that I was ready to face my first assignment. Taeyong had counseled me regarding my past and I worked through it but the thought of being used by humans again frightened the shit out of me. What I’m trying to say is that I’m _grateful_ to be _wrong_. Because by some stupid stroke of luck the human I managed to land was _you_. _You_ , Mark Lee, reminded me that there is still _good_ in the world. You're selfless, innocent, hard working and kinda dense at times.” They both laugh breathlessly, Mark no longer able to keep the tears at bay. “But you’re _good_ , and you gave me a new lease on life I never thought I could have. So _thank you_ , hyung.”

Donghyuck reaches out to cup Mark's face, wiping away the tears pooling in both his eyes with his thumb. The music inside switched to a slow but upbeat muffled tune. Mark stared at the boy in front of him and the constricting feeling returned, only this time he welcomed it. A numbing warmth spread through his chest to match the warmth of Donghyuck's hands either side of his face. The pair gaze at one another and Mark can tell that Donghyuck feels it too.

His heartbeat picks up when Donghyuck leans forward, Mark closes his eyes as the silver haired boy presses a feather light kiss below his eye where the tears had fallen. A wash of relief floods over the human and Mark's eyes flutter open to find Donghyuck's already peering up at him through his lashes, their chests almost flush and their noses bumping together.

He only has time to flick his gaze down to the other boy's lips and back before Donghyuck is inching forward, slotting their mouths together.

Mark surrenders himself to the feeling, closing his eyes and relishing in the press of Donghyuck's soft lips against his own. He removes his hand from the other boy's back to run his hands gently down the length of his outstretched arms. They part after their lips first meet, simply the press of their mouths that has Mark feeling _warm_ all over. It was surprisingly gentle in contrast to how Mark thought Donghyuck would kiss: neither of them get far before diving back in for more. The silver haired boy brings his arms to rest around Mark's neck, mirroring how he had clung to the blonde while they were dancing, the latter folds his fingers through the soft silvery strands of hair above the boy's ears. Donghyuck allows Mark to take the lead and the human tilts his head slightly to get a better angle. A soft sigh against his lips when he applies that little bit more pressure has Mark feeling impossibly warmer. His mouth and every other place where Donghyuck touches him tingles with a pleasant sensation.

They part for air, breathless and panting into each other's mouths. Before Donghyuck moves away, Mark leans forward to press one final gentle kiss on his lips. He opens his eyes in a daze and watches the other boy do the same, his eyelids hooded over his molten crimson orbs.

“M'sorry, hyuck,” the human says, his first words melding together due to the haze over his mind. “Sorry if that made you feel uncomfortable.”

The boy lets out a small snort. “Dumbass,” he pushes Mark's bangs away from his forehead and watches as they fold back over again with a fond smile. “I wouldn’t have started it if I weren’t comfortable with it.”

“Just checking,” Mark affirms in a low tone, playing idly with the black velvet adorning the boy's neck. Donghyuck bares it for him subtly, allowing the human to touch all he likes.

“I trust you,” he intones in a pitch barely above a whisper. The sentiment echoes in Mark's mind alongside replays of the kiss the whole way back to his apartment. A sentiment whispered once again into the seam of his lips when the pair share their final goodnight kiss before both of them fall into a gentle dreamless slumber, intertwined together in Mark's bed. Breathing in tandem as the time fades out on their last full day they could spend with one another. Their deadline hanging over their heads for the final time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, _please_ if you need help, do not be afraid to speak out. Unlike Donghyuck, there is no second chance. Please know that you are loved, and that you are worth so much more than you could ever know.
> 
> Lifeline
> 
> White Ribbon Foundation (domestic abuse helplines)
> 
> I’m sorry if these aren’t available in your country, there are still thousands more resources online available for you.
> 
> P.s. the song playing during the MarkHyuck kiss scene is Highway to Heaven just fyi hehe


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNING:** mentions of blood, demonic possession, violence and slight body horror
> 
> Also changed my account name but it's still me dw

_Weird._

_I don't remember drinking that much last night. Hardly anything. Is this a hangover?_

_Why does my head hurt?_

A groan next to him. The searing sensation behind his closed eyes amplifies.

_Fuck_

Mark's eyes fly open, his reclined body is prone and he has to squint against the light pouring in through his bedroom curtains. The stiff sheets crinkle as the warm bundle next to him shifts. He would have taken a moment to appreciate the demon's bedhead or his puffy cheeks if not for the throbbing sensation behind his retinas.

The room sways as if the bed were attached to a swing. Mark sits up, head reeling with the movement. He wills himself not to throw up. His entire mouth and throat is dry.

Donghyuck sits up too, peering at Mark through squinted eyelids that Mark _thinks_ is the result of the sunlight. But upon closer inspection the human realizes that the squint is a grimace. His full lips downturned into a frown, brows creased and jaw clenched.

Mark’s stomach drops.

_He feels this too._

Despite the protest of his limbs Mark scrambles to find his phone, patting the sheets surrounding them then resorting to his pockets. Eventually he has the brain capacity to check his nightstand to the left of his bed and spots it. The device is cool in his palm, alerting him to how overheated he is. He hopes, _prays_ that it's still there. It's no use, however. Because when he flips the phone over the sigil that once occupied the entire back of it was gone.

Leaving them without protection from whatever destructive force wanted to tear them both apart.

As if on queue, a familiar warm, bubbly sensation pools in Mark's nasal cavity. Bringing with it a sharp pain behind his eyes like nothing he's ever experienced. The phone falls to the ground with a clatter. The groan that escapes his lips is muffled by a high pitched whistle ringing in both his ears. His vision starts to dim around the same time that Donghyuck grips his arm, holding onto him as if he were trying to keep him together. Mark couldn’t see his face, couldn’t bear to see the blackened mess his nose surely would have created by now. His chest burns at the thought that Donghyuck is hurting, paying little mind to the pain now gripping his entire being.

His eyes could just be playing tricks on him, but he swears that Donghyuck is gripping his arm hard enough that the skin surrounding his fingers is white, just below the juncture of his elbow. The human swears that he spots a second hand scrawling red on his upturned forearm before a white hot burning sensation floods the entirety of it. He focuses on staying conscious: attempting to tap into something _anything_ that can keep him anchored to reality. Trying to ignore the pushing and pulling sensation deep within his core.

He hears the faint sound of Donghyuck's nasally voice muttering in a foreign tongue, distant sobbing’s of “ _I'm sorry_ ” and his name interspersed throughout. A scream is layered over the top of it all, and Mark only has a few moments to wonder why Donghyuck is screaming before he realizes that it's coming from _him_.

Very suddenly, as if someone had removed their hands over his ears, all the sounds in the room burst to life again . Becoming crystal clear and no longer muffled. Mark gulps in a breath of air before his brain even registers that he can do so again, his airways clear of blood. Lastly his vision finally returns, pupils narrowing to accommodate the light still flooding the room. The smell of burning flesh permeates throughout, a wash of subconscious relief folds over the human's battered form.

Small whispers of smoke creep their way up to the ceiling, their tendrils being captured by the light bracketing the windows. The entire room has a slight haze over it and Mark is surprised the smoke detector hasn’t been triggered yet.

His vision focuses on Donghyuck's face, his skin ashen and dark circles marring the space beneath his dull eyes. His expression is one of grave remorse, resembling somewhat the air of a kicked puppy: eyes glassy and welling with overwhelmed tears. The hand that was once on Mark's arm is being cradled by the opposite, the latter blocking his view yet stained red from his fingertips to his palm. The demon holds it from the human as if willing the hand to dare not touch the blonde haired boy.

Said boy glances down to regard his own arm, his breath hitching in his throat.

The entirety of his right forearm is a mangled mess of aggravated patches. Mark recognizes a sigil further down the length of his appendage toward his wrist. The sigil itself is a deep crimson, the skin it comes into contact with is raised and the surrounding area is an angry array of blotchy blues and purples. The scribe is not dissimilar to Donghyuck's original one, only _messier_. Telling of the demon's partially failed attempt at a more complicated hex.

Just ahead of the sigil is a hand shaped bruise bracketing Mark's forearm. An anticipatory grasp to try and negate the pain that the sigil would bring.

“I'm so sorry, hyung.” The demon chokes out, his voice small and broken. His molten eyes, glassy yet dull, are trained unblinkingly on the bruises he had caused.

“Hey,” Mark finally finds his voice, low and soft. “It's okay.”

Despite his body's protest, he leans forward slowly, weaving his undamaged arm around the demon's shaking shoulders. The grey haired boy's small form leans into him.

“It's okay,” Mark assures again, whispering into the boy's hair. “I'm still here.”

Because he didn’t mind the pain. Didn’t mind the throbbing sensation along the length of his arm, because he's _still here_. Not consumed by an otherworldly evil, still with a soul. He has Donghyuck's quick thinking to thank for that.

The bundle in his arms stirs, leaning back and leaving tear stains on Mark's shirt.

“It _really_ won't last this time,” he sniffles, still holding his offending hand to his chest with his stained one. “We need to get to that old hag's house, pronto.”

The journey downtown was almost a blur. In their hurry to leave, they only had the chance to freshen up slightly (a.k.a. put on a hoodie each, ruffle their hair a bit and wash the blood off wherever they could reach). Mark’s head and arm were still charged with a dull throbbing sensation and Donghyuck’s fastest pace was weary and lethargic due to fatigue. By the time they were pacing the street just north of their destination however, the demon's aura seemed to pick up. Presumably getting stronger the closer he gets to the record player.

Apartment block 2000 looms before them in no time, the streets bare save for the occasional visiting car braving the steep incline. Mark follows the lines of Donghyuck's back as they take the stairs, brushing past the rickety stair lift.

It occurs to Mark very vividly then that a week ago he was climbing these very steps, following Johnny and the stout landlord up to apartment number 66. Back when he had thought all they were walking into was a _ghost investigation_.

He barely has time to mull the sentiment over before they’re stood in front of the entrance to their destination. Donghyuck squares his shoulders before rapping his knuckles on the wooden surface, Mark shifts his weight on the balls of his feet. Planting his hands firmly into the pocket of his hoodie.

Both boys held their breaths in anticipation, so much so that a pin drop could be heard crystal clear in the entrance hall. The air was stale due to the old carpet and there were dints and scratches carved into the front door that Mark could have sworn weren’t there before.

It finally opens.

The woman behind the door had leather worn skin that had seen the light of many days. Her eyes were icy blue and her cropped hair was an array of salt an pepper: grey attempting to override the black. She had only opened the door slightly, blocking the view into the familiar apartment and staring warily at Mark. Despite not having said a word, Mark felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in the shadow of the woman's unblinking stare. Oddly enough she hadn’t even looked in Donghyuck's direction.

Said demon was equally as unresponsive. Seeming to have frozen up when faced with his former captor. It was then that Mark placed forward, gently dragging Donghyuck backwards by his hoodie to stand behind him, lest the old lady somehow recognizes the demon.

“Um.. hi?” Mark says finally, raising his hand in an awkward wave only to be reminded of the pain in his forearm. He covers up a grimace with his next words. “We um… we were here last week? To clear your house of paranormal activity?”

The woman blinks at him.

“We uh, were just wondering if we could take a look around your apartment. We’ve lost some recording equipment and figured it might be here?”

No answer.

“…please?”

She makes to close the door, but Donghyuck is faster. Shoving his foot between the door and the doorframe and bracing his arm against it's wooden surface. His lips are upturned with a snarl and beads of sweat are gathering along his forehead.

“ _Look_ ,” he rasps through gritted teeth. “We _just need_ a _few minutes_ with your _stupid_ record player, then we'll be _out of your way_.”

Neither of them could see the old lady’s reaction until the door starts to slowly swing open on it's hinges by itself. Donghyuck presses forward into the apartment slightly, followed by Mark. The woman is stood in the entrance hall, peering at Donghyuck like it's the first time she’s noticing his presence. Her head tilts upon the axis of her neck.

“Ah, the… record player,” her voice is mellow and smooth despite the awkward pause mid sentence. Her features morph into a sickly sweet smile as she glances between the pair of them.

“I'm going to destroy that now.”

“ _NO!_ ” they both say at the same time, leaping forward to stop the woman. Both of them knowing that destroying the record player would _kill Donghyuck_.

She stops in her tracks but not to listen to them, rounding on Donghyuck and pinning him against the wall with inhuman speed and strength. It was then that Mark notices the state of the apartment: various etchings engraved into the walls, photo frames and paintings strewn about broken and the lounge room floor freshly decorated with a giant inverted pentagram. The candles surrounding it dripping wax onto the carpet.

“ _Get out_ ,” the thing pinning Donghyuck snarls. Voice now gruesomely deep and distorted, as if the old woman's vocal cords were not her own.

_That's not an old lady anymore._

“Hyuck,” he tries to warn meekly, but the thing's head snaps in his direction: the whites of its eyes covered over with glossy black, replacing the brilliant blue until both of its eyes are just solid black orbs. Donghyuck has probably figured out as much already.

A feral growl rips through the thing's throat, bearing it's teeth to reveal a mouthful of incisors. With a renewed sense of energy, Donghyuck grips the arm holding him in place, using it as an anchor to lift himself up and leverage a hefty kick with both legs to the being's stomach. The force of the blow sends it flying against the opposing wall to fall in a heap on the floor. Donghyuck uses this opportunity to pace further into the apartment, walking surefootedly towards the sitting room. Mark follows after a few moments, needing time to process what had just happened.

Apparently the thing on the floor didn’t care to give him the time: it rises with ease as if it where made of jelly, using no limbs to brace itself and having to roll each appendage into the right position. Another snarl sounds throughout the apartment and Mark doubts anyone is hearing any of it to come and save them.

Parts of the being's skin begin to melt and peel, the former old woman becoming nothing but a blood bag for the beast possessing her. Beneath the skin is a black viscous ooze of a similar consistency to Donghyuck's blood. Only this substance ebbs and flows as if it has a mind of it’s own, forcefully peeling the skin away to reveal just a glossy black entity with several rows of sharp teeth. Some of the original host remains however the majority of it gives way to the sharp black tendrils. It rises to it’s full height: its ‘head’ almost hitting the ceiling and towering over the pair of boys.

Donghyuck swears under his breath, muttering something else as he attempts to open the door to the sitting room that has not long been locked.

“What?” Mark asks, his stomach churning as he watches the beast gain its bearings.

“I said it's a _husk_ ” Donghyuck repeats, before resorting to shouldering the door to break it open with force.

Mark recalls what Donghyuck had said about husks – what the silver haired boy himself would have become if not for Taeyong. They were bottom feeder hellspawn, having little reasoning and copious amounts of savagery. This one must be particularly strong if it could imitate a human, presumably from having just consumed a soul.

While having never met her, Mark does feel bad for the old lady. He recalls the well worn Ouija board, the pentagram below the record player, the surplus of candles in the house. The only pictures in the entire apartment where of only landscapes. She was likely a very lonely person. On the bright side of things, at least she was somewhat successful in her goal, what with summoning a fully manifested spirit before her passing.

Said manifestation was alerted to their position the second Donghyuck threw his weight against the door. The hinges protesting and the wall buckling due to the deadbolt lock pressing against it from the inside.

The being hisses, barring its teeth and stalking closer to them down the narrow hallway.

_It wants to be the only thing lurking in this apartment._

The door gives way. Snapping the bronze hinges and splintering the frame. Donghyuck falls with it but is back on his feet with ease.

Teeth gnashing, the husk advances on them at an incredible pace. Before Mark can register the movement it has a sickly tendril around his waist. Squeezing him until it feels as though something is bound to give way.

“Put him _down_!” his demon's tone sends shivers down his spine, hearing it clearly over the husk's consistent gurgling. The being's attention was captivated by Donghyuck's outburst, lifting it's bleary eyes to glare at the smaller demon.

Out of spite, it proceeds to throw Mark across the room.

The ceiling and floor reels until he lands with a thud against the wall. He crumples in a heap on the floor in a fashion not dissimilar to his phone when he had thrown it all that time ago. Pain blooms in his side and the plaster wall above him was cracked with a concave.

In the time it takes Mark to will the world to stop spinning, Donghyuck had leapt onto the husk. The two hellspawn squabbling like lions fighting for the throne. Though by in large in comparison to the Husk Donghyuck likely represents more of a domesticated housecat. What he lacked in brute strength and size however, he made up for in speed and cunning: easily dodging the husk’s attacks as it forcefully smashes it's various tendrils about the apartment. Mark's hazy vision hones in on the record player on the other side of the room.

He attempts to stand, making the mistake of using his bruised arm. Gritting his teeth against the pain he manages to get up onto wobbly feet, using the cabinet nearby to drag himself toward the device. The trinkets atop the rickety platform wobble precariously.

“ _Mark_ …” the human's head snaps to the direction of the voice. Donghyuck is still parrying and avoiding the attacks. “ _…the lounge room!_ ”

The blonde nods, turning back to the record player and prying his fingers beneath the heavy wooden base. He hefts it off the small table with an exhale. His side and forearm screaming in protest. The inverted pentagram beneath the record player is glowing red like a fresh brand, but for once Mark is relieved to see it's still there.

With a few perfectly timed dodges, Donghyuck was able to lure the husk out of the sitting room and away from Mark. The doorway into the lounge room is wide open and free of demons, so Mark uses it as an opportunity to get through with the record player. He places the heavy device as gently as he can in the center of the giant pentagram.

The husk snarls behind him, the booming sound of it reverberating through Mark’s entire being right down to his core.

The human turns to see Donghyuck impaled by one of the monster's sharp black tendrils. The appendage forcefully rammed through the smaller demon's stomach and through to the other side of the drywall.

Mark chestnut eyes widen. He understood that Donghyuck was essentially immortal to an extent, but if he's immobilized for long enough Mark knows he’s not strong enough to handle the beast alone. They needed to protect one another _and_ the record player at all costs.

The human's feet carry him forward without his knowledge. The husk hadn’t gone for the final blow yet, opting to stare with intrigue as Donghyuck struggles against its hold. The boy's silver hair is splayed against the kitchen wall and his teeth are gritted and upturned with a soundless snarl. His favorite hoodie is tattered and hanging off his weary form.

Mark slams a vase against the back of the monster's head.

The ceramic cracks and splinters, rattling onto the linoleum. Mark would be surprised at how dense the black liquid of the husk's true form is, if not for the fact that the creature's whole head rotated one-eighty to stare unblinkingly down at him.

Sufficiently distracted, the husk releases Donghyuck. Slipping its tendril out of the wall and stomach and pulling away from the injured demon. The hardened black appendage is dripping with the rich liquid black of Donghyuck's blood. The majority of it pouring out of the demon's wound and staining the kitchen floor.

Suddenly the looming beast block's Mark's view of the silver haired boy. The human backtracks over the carpet of the lounge with the being advancing on him menacingly. His heartbeat thunders in his ears and his ribs and arm throbs with each movement. Fatigued and breathless pants join the cacophony of hellish sounds being ripped from the hellspawn's throat.

Like a viper poised to strike, the husk's entire neck recoils once Mark had run out of room to run. He closes his eyes. The human prepared himself for the pain, prepared himself to feel each and every pointed fang tearing through flesh and bone. But it never comes. He opens his eyes.

Donghyuck is in front of him, poised with purpose between Mark and the creature. His back is facing towards the human, his hands pressing into the beast's chest with his shoulders shuddering from the exertion. A shill screech fills the confined space and the creature backs off as if burned.

The smell that follows can attest that it likely is being burned .

Over Donghyuck's shoulder Mark spies a small photo of a foreign beach. Layered on top of the photo, glowing with a searing red hue is a complicated insignia. The sigil burns through the photo paper and attaches itself to the black tendrils snaking their way out from the former old lady's chest. The creature stumbles away a few steps, eventually tripping on another broken photo frame and landing face first on the floor. Motionless.

The silence that follows is charged with tension, both boys waiting for the creature to animate back to consciousness. Donghyuck is still stood protectively in front of Mark, clutching the gaping hole in his stomach as it slowly but surely repairs itself.

For what seems like hours they stand and watch the creature twitch and writhe with subtle movements. It's when Donghyuck lurches forward onto the floor that they are both broken out of their reprieve. The demon still clutches his stomach, panting as he sits hunched over on the floor. Mark kneels down next to him and places a soothing hand on his shoulder.

“Gonna break the curses now,” his nasally voice is barely a whisper by Mark's side, yet it makes the human's stomach drop in an instant. He stares at the demon's profile, his tanned skin glossy with sweat and the beast's saliva.

_Can't you stay a little longer?_

Mark wants to ask this. Wants _so badly_ to ask Donghyuck if there is any other way. But time has been kind enough to them already, allowing them to have this moment of silence before their parting at all.

That doesn’t mean Mark _wants_ this to happen.

He thinks back to the first time he was in this apartment, how uptight and unhealthy he was. Spending sleepless nights fueled by red bull and a determination to try and fix things that were hardly broken. He thought of how Donghyuck was when they first met: nihilistic, distrusting and with an innate hatred for humans. Their whole unlikely friendship might have begun as a ‘curse’, but it hardly warrants that label now.

Mark has never met anyone quite like Donghyuck. Someone so strong and brave. Someone so effortlessly beautiful in the most mundane circumstances. Someone so deserving of love, and kindness, and the second chance that he has never been granted fully. Mark wonders if, in another life, in another _time_ , Donghyuck would have been willing to make Mark his second chance.

They both have come _so far_ by each other's side. It feels odd now just to give all that up.

While Mark had been thinking the demon had rearranged the various sigils surrounding the lounge room pentagram. The gash in his stomach had healed, however he paced around the room slowly and methodically. Ensuring everything was right to perform the unbinding ritual. Mark chest aches as he stares at Donghyuck's face: brows furrowed and eyes trained on the floor.

The human knows now that the tightness in his chest is because he cherishes Donghyuck as more than a passing acquaintance. He's a thousand percent sure he was gone for the other boy when he had assured that little girl at the mall that her hair was pretty. But the thing he's upset about the most with all this is that he will be losing a _friend_.

He opens his mouth so say it, but somehow Donghyuck knew what was going to happen. He paces over to where Mark is knelt.

“Hyuck I-“

“Shh,” Donghyuck cuts in. But it isn’t with a rushed or urgent tone. It was a plead. “…please don't.”

The demon's eyes were red rimmed and welling with moisture. His face was inches away from Mark’s, staring with a broken expression as if pleading the human not to continue his train of thought.

Mark conceded.

“I,” he stammers, his eyes subconsciously flicking down to Donghyuck's lips. He spies a sliver of the demon's stomach out the corner of his eye. His hoodie tapering just to the right of his belly button. “Your hoodie is ruined.”

He makes to pull his own over his head, despite it not being in much better shape. The human desperately trying to give the silver haired boy something to remember him by.

The demon shakes his head, placing his hand over Mark's and stopping his attempt to lift his sweater up. He smiles sadly at the other. “It's okay, hyung.”

Mark tries to convey so much with his answering gaze, while also trying to study the demon's features as much as he can. It must have been too painful for Donghyuck, because he looks away in favor of readjusting the candles that had snuffed out sometime during their fight with the husk. A dull hissing sound snaps to life making Mark jump slightly. Only to furrow his brows when he realizes it's the pentagram being ignited, the crimson glow travelling from one point and following the line right back to where it started.

_We're doing this already?_

He wasn’t ready.

He tries to speak but Donghyuck starts chanting an incantation in Latin, seated next to Mark with his eyes closed. The human wonders idly if he should close his eyes, too.

The three sigils surrounding the pentagram's outer circle ignite to the same orange glow as the center, casting a warm hue over everything in the room. Suddenly the wooden base of the record player is flooded with flames. The dark wood hissing and popping as the tongues of flames seep their way around it. Donghyuck breathes a sigh of relief beside him: his entire body sagging and his face clearing of exhaustion. His eyes open to reveal a familiar brilliant red, his colored contacts having disappeared. He stops chanting and levels Mark with an apologetic smile.

Mark is too overwhelmed to speak, so Donghyuck does so for him. The demon scoots closer, their knees bumping and his hands finding a home either side of Mark's face. Ever so slowly he inches close until their foreheads are pressed together. The silver haired boy's familiar warmth enveloping Mark into a calm embrace. Their eyes slide shut.

“Everything is going to be okay, Hyung.”

For the briefest moment the blank slate behind Mark's closed eyelids turns to a brilliant white, followed by an odd sensation of air softly flowing over his skin. Eventually, the warmth and weight against his forehead disappears and his heart sinks for what feels like the twelfth time that day.

His eyes meet no resistance when they open again. The apartment is dim save for a small lamp placed pristinely next to the couch. From what Mark can see, the entire apartment is clean. No candle wax on the carpet, no smashed vases scattered across the tiles and no pentagram adorning the floor. The beast that was once laying prone by the sitting room's entrance is gone and there are no hideous gouges in the walls.

Finally, Mark lifts the sleeve of his hoodie, rolling it up until it meets the juncture of his elbow. The hand shape bruise and the sigil had disappeared. His entire forearm wiped clean as if those wounds had never existed.

As if Donghyuck had never existed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hides* please don’t hate me……..
> 
> Last two chapters are next and this thing WILL have a happy ending, I promise.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt bad for the ending of chapter eight, so I hauled ass to bring you the last two installments.
> 
> No major warnings for this chapter, just some Troy Bolton level angst. :)

He felt empty.

Mark sat there in the silent apartment, feeling sore, confused, and _empty_.

He rolls the sleeve of his hoodie down, the warmth and comfort it’s supposed to provide instead making him feel hollow down to the core. The pressure of holding his weight on his knees for so long begins to send shooting pains along the nerve endings of his legs. His entire being feeling worn out and his mind barely tethered to reality.

Closing his eyes once more, he attempts a steadying breath, only to immediately regret it when his chest aches with the strain. Apparently Donghyuck hadn’t known the extent of his injuries all too well.

The silence of the apartment begun to freak him out, feeling as though he were an intruder on corrupted land. He needed to leave, needed to more _importantly_ get his injuries checked out. He fishes his phone out from deep within the pocket of his sweatpants, breathing a slightly strained sigh of relief when he discovers it had not been smashed during the fight.

He dials the only contact in his saved folder that he has ever called, listening to it ring distantly before finally putting it up to his ear. It connects.

“What’s up, kid?” Johnny answers.

♤♡◇♧

“Take a seat,” Ten says, gesturing to the kitchen bench.

Mark was stood shirtless in the kitchen of Johnny and Ten’s shared apartment, towards the beachside of the city. Their flat was a joint anniversary present to celebrate being together for two years (additionally, to celebrate two years of Ten’s sobriety). It was relatively spacious and in a calm, quiet area. Their apartment building had a community garden which the pair used to frequent quite a lot before Ten’s major _really_ stared to pick up. On a clear day you could see the ocean from their bedroom.

The city’s smog was heavy and thick today.

Mark heaved himself atop the bench.

Almost the entire right side of his chest and below his armpit was an array of mottled bruises. Mark figures they probably look worse than they feel, judging by Ten’s raised eyebrows and Johnny’s previous widened eyes before he disappeared further into the apartment.

Ten set the first aid kit down next to him, looking like the picture of professionalism as he dons some white rubber gloves. The smaller man first check’s Mark’s eyesight; shining a compact torch into his eye briefly to ensure the younger hadn’t landed himself a concussion. The blonde haired boy had told Johnny that he had fallen down the stairs to his apartment, but Ten was obviously taking all the precautions. He sets down the torch with a clatter. The slight noise in the quiet kitchen is enough to make Mark’s ears ring.

Soon after the general checkup items were done, Johnny reentered the kitchen with some painkillers from their bathroom and a glass of water. The raven haired boy sets them down out of Ten’s way and backs up to lean against the drawers on the opposite side of the kitchen. The room is silent save for the sound of Mark’s breathing.

“So what _actually_ happened?” The taller finally asks, levelling Mark with an incredulous stare. His arms are folded loosely across his broad chest, head tilted slightly with an air of intrigue.

Mark looks to the tiled floor, the cold patterned surface is shiny from having been freshly mopped. “I fell,” he mumbles.

“Sure, okay,” Johnny replies nodding his head and glancing sideways to indicate he wasn’t buying it. Guilt rises in Mark’s chest. ‘ _Don’t lie, hyung_ ’ Donghyuck had said. ‘ _You’re bad at it._ ’

“I…” The blonde begins, trailing off when he realizes _what could he say?_ He brings his gaze up to regard Johnny. There was _no_ way he could tell his Hyungs that his ribs had gotten hurt trying to fend off a lifeless spawn of hell, in an attempt to stop it from hurting his friend slash crush slash person he had kissed a few times. Just like there was no way he could tell them that _said_ person also happened to be a demon. Neither of them would understand: Ten would probably start to check over his mental stability and Johnny would likely laugh in his face.

He’d rather not be laughed at today. Not now.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he says with finality, eyes snapping back to frown at the tiles. He misses the meaningful look Ten shoots his boyfriend over his slim shoulder.

There’s a short pause before Johnny finally sighs. “Okay then.” Mark is grateful that he dropped the subject, ensuring that he didn’t have to experience the pain of reliving the past week; a pain that would surely come with letting the pair of them in on what had _really_ been going on. All in all it turns out that perhaps _this_ had been Mark's curse all along. The pain Donghyuck had left behind was Mark's burden to bare.

Throughout their small altercation, Ten had been poking and prodding Mark’s body in search of ailment. His hands were warm but the addition of the rubber gloves left a prickly feeling over the blonde boy’s skin. He had flinched a few times when Ten had pressed particularly hard on the side of his ribcage.

The brunette takes his gloves off and throws them in the trashcan, clearing his throat. “Luckily, from what I can find, your ribs aren’t cracked.” He begins packing up his things, sliding the tablets and the water across the bench to him. “They’re bruised though, so try to limit yourself from strenuous activities and rest well. If you find it getting swollen you can try putting ice on the area and take some painkillers so you don’t have to take shallow breaths. Any issues, go to a real doctor.”

“Thanks, Ten-hyung,” Mark mumbles, setting himself carefully off the bench and downing the pills. He refrains from trying to assure the older that he indeed is the closest thing he has to a ‘ _real_ ’ doctor. With a little help from Johnny, he manages to struggle back into his hoodie. The taller man smiles patiently at him before patting him on the head as they stand at the threshold of the apartment.

“Take care of yourself, kid.”

♤♡◇♧

Mark doesn’t.

The second he got home he had slept off the painkillers, then proceeded to rest up for the whole of the following day. But by the time Monday came around, he had fallen into the same unhealthy patterns, the same harsh criticisms, and the same sleepless nights. Despite the pain of it all he would still walk into his lounge room expecting to see a certain silver haired boy reclined on his couch watching _Harry Potter_. When the kimchi they had made together all those days ago was finally gone, he still expected to be reprimanded for eating cheap ramen as a meal. On his way to College he would walk by the ice cream parlor and expect to be dragged in, a warm palm against his own.

He had noticed idly that they had gotten rid of limited-edition Tangerine Ice Cream.

By the first night he had caught up on all his course work. His final project was all but finished yet he continued to spend _hours_ editing and re-editing it to try and somehow improve it. Days passed and eventually he had run out of ways to modify the same set of sounds. That’s when he began ruminating.

Everywhere he looked he thought of Donghyuck. The subway, his lecture rooms, his tutorials, his apartment. He knew he was being whiny and _pathetic_ but he couldn’t stop himself when all he wanted to do was to hear the ring of his laugh one more time. The silence of solitary life ringing louder than he had ever remembered, muting all the other sights and sounds and gripping ahold of his very core.

That’s not to say that no one _tried_ to get ahold of him. Like usual, his mom rang after a few days and he stared at the screen with an imaginary hand gripping his throat, feeling more hollow than usual as he watched it go to his message bank. She hadn’t left a message – she never did.

Ten had tried him a few times via message, then an additional three times via phone call. Johnny had tried to ring him five times until the blonde haired boy turned his phone off completely.

Late at night when he grew tired of staring blankly at his ceiling, he had attempted a web search in a feeble attempt to try and get him back. Willing to even go so far as to try and find a way into the Dark Web. His laptop's battery had run out before he could act on that thought, and apparently not even an incognito google search was enough for him to find what he was looking for.

He doesn’t even think that it was entirely about Donghyuck anymore. Yes, he enjoyed the demon’s company and would give _anything_ to have it back but that was only a portion of it. All his life he had told himself that he _needed_ to be in control, that he _needed_ to succeed quickly in life or be a failure for the following duration of it. Donghyuck had shown him another way of living. A _scarier_ way, for sure. But he had surprised himself with just how much he had enjoyed it. It was as if he couldn’t bare to stray away from what he knows, without the stability of someone there to tell him ‘ _it’s okay_ ’. So he surrenders himself to the vicious cycle once again.

It was then that it finally all came to a head. After days of wallowing (Mark wasn’t entirely sure how many exactly – it was kinda difficult to count when he was constantly one prolonged blink away from downing his fourth red bull), a hesitant knock on his door pulls him away from the mess of his room.

Knowing that it was sometime around midday by the clock on the kitchen counter, he attempts to rub the dryness from his eyes before approaching the door. It was likely Johnny finally coming over to drag him out of his low with force. He grasps the cold door handle and prepares to be reprimanded, figuring it was finally time he gets at least the half truth off his chest.

The door opens, and time stands still. A figure, sporting light brown windswept hair and a familiar black hoodie is stood in the hallway. Even in the low light his honeysuckle tanned skin is deep set and glistening. He shifts his weight upon sneakered feet.

“Hyuck…?”

The blonde boy's eyes are wide and he barely hears his own question. If this was a dream then it has to be the most vivid experience of his life: his entire chest wells with a cacophony of different feelings, constricting within his battered ribcage.

The figure raises his head, peering at Mark with chestnut eyes. They glisten with tears the second they land on the taller boy.

“Hi,” the figure replies in a familiar nasally voice, his tone small. He gives the other a hesitant smile. “Mark-hyung.”

Just that alone knocks Mark breathless. Thousands of questions, statements and accusations rattle within his mind in the span of a second. He stutters over his words like a fifth grader giving a presentation.

“I.. wh-… _how_?” he finally manages.

Donghyuck laughs breathlessly, the sound resulting in a wave of joy crashing over the blonde boy. He tilts his head slowly to the right, bringing his chestnut gaze to peer down the hallway. Mark paces out of the threshold, following Donghyuck's stare.

Johnny is strutting down the hall, a satisfied smirk splayed across his lips. Mark's thin eyebrows draw together by the time the older reaches them. His hyung has his hands resting in the pockets of his thin jacket, stopping close to Donghyuck beneath the hallway's florescent lights. Mark is about to question why he is here, why he's acting to weird right now when Johnny stops him short.

He watches as his hyung's eyes shift from a warm hazelnut brown to bright glaring crimson.

His jaw drops as everything visibly falls into place within his mind: Johnny’s midnight black hair, his mocking nature regarding all things supernatural, his preference for darker clothing.

 _His familiarity with Donghyuck_.

“ _What?_ ” was the only coherent word Mark could form, his voice pitching to an odd range. Johnny didn’t even have the decency to be apologetic about it, his smirk growing with every stilted expression that passes over Mark's features. A glance to Donghyuck is enough to confirm to Mark that he had known about Johnny being a demon all along, what with his guilty expression mixed in with the admiration in his eyes.

Johnny snickers. “Don't hurt yourself, kid. I’m still me: it was just apart of my contract that I couldn’t reveal myself to mortals. I’ve had that rule tweaked a bit for this _exact_ reason. I couldn’t bring myself to keep lying to you.”

Mark takes a moment to digest that. He wasn’t angry at Johnny in the slightest just… confused. “C-contract?” he tries out the foreign word, then takes in a sharp breath. “ _Wait_ , so… is Ten-hyung a demon too?”

Donghyuck shakes his head. “Johnny-hyung chose to stay with Ten-hyung because they fell in… love. The contract just keeps things formal on the demon's end. He moved out of our hive to live in the mortal world.”

The blonde nods slowly, still needing time to process it all. Johnny exhales a long, steady breath.

“You two should head inside,” he suggests with a small smile. Mark agrees with his sentiment: they had a lot to talk about. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

The pair of boys head into Mark's apartment, the blonde immediately conscious of the fickle state it's in. He flicks the lounge room blinds open, flooding the previously darkened room with much needed sunlight. This only highlights the mess. Before the panic sets in, he turns to gaze at Donghyuck, studying him as he’s bathed in the new light.

“It's..” he tries, trailing off while trying to find the right words. His lungs fill with a steadying breath, speaking next on the exhale.

“It's so good to see you, Hyuck.”

Oddly, Donghyuck brings a hand to scratch the back of his neck awkwardly while averting his gaze at Mark's sudden sincerity. “You're not mad?” he mumbles, his voice is tiny.

“Why would I be mad?” Mark asks with a breathless chuckle.

The brunette glances back at him, the other holding his gaze. “I left you… without a plan I-…” he gulps. “I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.”

Mark's light expression falls into one of confusion, making the brunette boy withdraw slightly. “You uh… didn’t plan on Johnny-hyung bringing you back?”

The other sighs before frowning at the floor. “The plan was to just get me out of that old lady's house and back home,” he digresses, avoiding Mark's gaze as if he were afraid of finding anger written on his features. “I think Johnny had secretly planned for me to get you out of your isolation for a little bit, too. But who knows how his mind works…”

He finally meet's Mark's eyes.

“But I don’t think he expected us both to… ‘click’ so well.. or whatever.”

Warmth blooms in Mark's chest as he levels the shorter with a knowing smile. All the hurt of the past few days since Donghyuck's disappearance retreating to the back of his mind. ‘Click' they certainly did, he muses with a soft smile.

“I understand, Hyuck,” He says, said boy un-coiling slightly with relief: the tension in his shoulders lessening and his features loosening. “I’m not mad at you.”

The tension plaguing the boy's entire being washes away, standing there by Mark's kitchen counter with an unreadable expression. “Oh..”

Very suddenly his chestnut eyes are on Mark again, the blonde boy feeling comfortably trapped beneath his gaze. The boy smiles genuinely, letting out yet another breathless chuckle.

“Hug me then, dumbass?”

Despite the insult, Mark finds his feet carrying him across the room to scoop the smaller boy into his arms. Donghyuck's button nose presses against his skin as he burrows his face into the crook of Mark's neck, Mark's own nuzzling the silky hair atop the other's head. The embrace is breathless, shaky and _warm_ : both of them grasping one another tightly as if the other would disappear again. Donghyuck's hair smells of strawberries, the freshly colored light brown locks providing a breath of fresh air for Mark who had felt as though he were suffocating for _days_.

“Wait,” he murmurs, pulling back from the hug slightly but not daring to let go. Donghyuck looks up to him with watery eyes and flushed cheeks. “Your hair is dyed again?”

The detail might have appeared irrelevant in comparison to the thousand other things Mark could have brought up. And frankly, he does feel kinda silly when he questions it out loud. But the way Donghyuck's expression shifts at the question tells him that it was the exact thing he needed to mention.

Donghyuck's breath fans across Mark's collar bones as he releases a shaky exhale. His Adam’s apple bobs with a subtle gulp.

“Please don’t freak out,” Donghyuck whispers, his gaze flickering to stare at the cotton of Mark's t-shirt and Mark knows he means more than just about his hair color. The blonde gives a small, almost imperceptible nod.

“Johnny called in a favor that supposedly the powers that be owed him from decades ago. They had agreed to send me back to the mortal plane… back to you, but not without a price.” His eyes fall to the floor again beneath their feet.

“My immortality.”

Mark couldn’t stop the gasp from escaping his lips. Donghyuck slowly took one of his hands from the other boy's waist, folding his own warm palm over it and bringing it up to rest on his chest, just above the red writing of his hoodie. There, Mark could feel the steady beating of his heart.

Shock constricts Mark's throat, his mouth hanging open slightly as he gazes at Donghyuck's tanned hand resting over his own. The former demon let’s put yet another long sigh before letting their hands drop, distancing himself from Mark much to the other boy's chagrin.

“Um,” Donghyuck stammers. “I… _like_ you, hyung. Like… _really fucking much_. But… please don’t feel like-.. _obliged_ to stay with me just because I’m human again. I didn’t _just_ choose this for you, specifically. Though, spending time with you did technically give me the strength to wanna start over and start trusting people again. You don’t have to give me an answer right away, either. I’m happy to keep being… f-friends with you, hyung if that's all you want.”

Mark closes the gap again, flooding Donghyuck's space with a giddy smile, because he already knew his answer without needing time to think.

“I like you too, Hyuck,” he says quietly, the other boy studying his features like he could find all the secrets of the universe there. “I’m happy to give this,” he takes Donghyuck's hand. “…a try if you’re happy to?”

He raises an eyebrow that’s met with Donghyuck’s usual brilliant smile (minus the fangs), they come together for another long and satisfied hug.

Shortly after they part Donghyuck retrieves a piece of folded paper from the pocket of his hoodie. The sound of it shifting in his pocket had been heard both times they had gone in for the embrace, reminding the brunette that it was there. He hands the paper to Mark with a nervous bite of his lip.

“I’m… kinda shitty with words so,” Mark takes the paper gently. “That's what else I have to say to you.”

The blonde boy opens the paper to find Donghyuck's black scrawled handwriting on the back of a hand drawn field of sunflowers. Mark is instantly reminded of the drawing Donghyuck had created during their first day together – the one that he had carelessly thrown away.

‘ _Hyung_

_Uh.. hi I guess? This is going to be super sappy so please just… don’t read it out aloud._

_I wanted to properly and permanently thank you for everything you have done for me. You might not have realized it but… each of your little reassurances, be it because I was scared, unsure, or cautious, allowed me to slowly trust the mortal world around me. It was because of this that I was able to allow myself to live, breathe and feel freely again. I doubt that would have happened had I been cursed with anyone else._

_You, Mark Lee, are the most hard working, determined human I've ever met._ But. _You work yourself like a machine. Grinding yourself down to the bone day after day until that warmth within you eventually fizzles out. Take it from someone who never got to slow down and enjoy life until I met you, from someone who might only now, because of you, get to grow old and enjoy the world with a fresh sense of innocence. Do not, and I mean_ do not, _take this shit for granted. Accept your limits, your 'flaws' and know that they're okay. Because if I can like you for the human you are, something tells me that you can too._

 _So... if you'll have me, I'd like very much to be cursed together with you for a little while longer._ ’

Mark looks up from the paper with tears welling in his eyes to match Donghyuck's. The pair laugh with one another at their state before Mark nods graciously at Donghyuck. The small gesture conveying _yes_.

He would like that very much, too.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :))))

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another double chapter update!!! So if you haven’t read chapter nine yet I'd suggest giving it a looksee

_**YEARS LATER** _

“Breathe,” a voice reminds him, the owner of it placing his warm hands either side of his face. Mark stares into his boyfriend's chestnut irises as he follows the instruction, his uncertainty and fear washing away in an instant. Donghyuck's plump lips form a small smile before pulling away.

He adjusts the collar of Mark's black robe, smoothing down the crease while simultaneously steadying Mark with his touch. His hands trail down the blonde's chest, no doubt admiring how good the taller looks in black. An usher passes by for the fifth time throwing Donghyuck an urgent look, signalling that the ceremony was about to begin. The brunette steps away from Mark again, for real this time, as the usher begins calling names and numbers for the roll order.

“I’ll go find my seat now,” Donghyuck says.

“Okay,” Mark breathes, the constricting feeling already spiking again.

“It's going to be okay, hyung,” Donghyuck reminds him, pecking him quickly on the cheek before slipping out of the marquee to find his seat with Johnny and Ten.

Mark only has time to close his eyes and breathe deeply once before the Dean's voice can be heard in the distance, the first lot of students begin walking out of the marquee and up to the stage. The girl in front of him has a vibrant pink ribbon braided through her hair, an easy thing for Mark to focus on following rather than on the nausea swirling in his stomach.

Before he knows it the stage is before him, and pink ribbon girl is being called up. She accepts her certificate with a smile behind her glasses. Mark adjusts his own, pushing them upwards upon the bridge of his nose.

“Mark Lee.”

Despite the several nightmares he had woken up from sweating like crazy, he managed to _not_ trip up the stairs and all onto his face. Clambering up on stage to be greeted by his College's Dean, presenting him his Certificate of Honours for his fully completed Sound Production and Design degree. The paper card feels like gold in his grasp.

He looks out to the sea of clapping guests, eyes honing in on a large sign painted in obnoxiously bright lettering that reads ‘ _LET'S GEDDIT MARK LEE!!! <3_’. Below the sign is Johnny sporting the biggest, cheesiest grin Mark has ever seen. Ten is to his right, clapping and cheering with pride. To the left of the sign is a mop of light brown hair, the boy himself trying desperately to hide his tears. Mark had said during the journey over here that if Donghyuck cried, Mark would surely follow after.

Graduation papers in hand, stood upon a stage having successfully graduated college, Mark looks out into the crowd at his most cherished friends and he couldn't be _happier_.

♤♡◇♧

Mark stares at his phone on the coffee table.

Beside it rests a delicately opened envelope addressed to him and ‘Mr Seo Youngho’ printed on the crisp white paper. An identical envelope resides at Johnny and Ten's apartment, planned to be framed and hung on the wall beside their matching University certificates.

Its contents? A partnership deal from SM Entertainment, allowing them the opportunity to turn their ghost hunting series into a professional television series; to be produced and edited by the both of them as a partnership duo.

Donghyuck rests two cups of tea on the table before settling on the couch next to Mark. He had asked the blonde boy carefully if he needed time and space to do this alone, but Mark figured it was only fair that he, too were here for this.

Now with Donghyuck's steady presence by his side, he gathers the courage to pick the phone up and unlock it, the screen immediately displaying the call function. From there, with shaky fingers, Mark dials a number that – despite it being unsaved – he had memorized throughout all these years. He swallows his fear as he selects the ‘call' option.

The tinny sound of the call connecting rings in his ears as he bites his nails, awaiting an answer. His hand is brought from his mouth and the nervous habit in favor of being held between Donghyuck's two steady ones. The receiver on the other end connects, her sweet voice warming Mark's heart with her greeting. He smiles with disbelief, ready to finally, _finally_ be the bearer of good news.

“Hi Mom…”

♤♡◇♧

The bus was empty by the time they had reached their stop, stepping out into the summer heat in stark contrast to the cool interior of the long vehicle. Mark fishes out a bottle of water for them each and slips their annual bus passes into his backpack. Donghyuck had never gotten around to fully understanding the concept behind Uber drivers, so on long journeys like this they opted for the bus.

Their destination was North along the coast, about an hour's journey from their city and several miles from any towns or populations. The bus stop they were dropped off at was a ten minute journey through a densely wooded forest; the path just barely carved out due to the lack of foot traffic. The air was clean here and the atmosphere was peaceful. The only noises were the distant chirping of birds and the rustle of shrubbery. The tall trees sheltered the pair from the blazing sun as they journeyed hand in hand towards a red circled area on Donghyuck's map. The brunette powering on through the leaves and vines surefootedly, even when the dirt beneath their feet gradually turns to sand. The boy seems to thrive the second his shoes come into contact with the fine grains.

The trees begin to thin out as the path winds down a small decline, the faint sound of waves lapping along a shoreline can be heard crystal clear as the woods loses its density. Donghyuck drags him faster the second he hears it.

The tree line cuts off abruptly, giving way to a narrow stretch of beach. The area surrounding where they had emerged was a quiet cove, bracketed by two sheer cliff faces at its mouth and enclosed by the woods surrounding the rest of its perimeter. No shuffling, traffic or voices can be heard from here, only the sound of the waves washing up on the clean white sand. The water itself is a clear lapis and untouched, essentially all of the sea weed and general pollution having been filtered out by the cluster of rocks stationed at the inlet.

“Is this the place?” Mark asks, despite knowing he didn’t have to. He keeps his voice low as not to disturb the peace.

Donghyuck hums beside him, staring contemplatively out at the water. The rippling reflections of light projecting into his skin beautifully.

Mark looks out to the water, the sun overhead warming his face. “So what now?”

“We wait,” the other states simply.

So they do, standing side by side one another on a secluded beach. The sun shifts lazily along the skyline until the trees surrounding them cast a shadow along the pristine sand, seemingly protecting them from getting sunburnt. They had dressed according to the weather: Mark clad in a lightweight white t-shirt paired with blue and pink board shorts. Donghyuck, who had been gradually trying to integrate a lighter color palette into his wardrobe, was dressed in mint green shorts, a navy blue tank top with a thin white, long sleeve button down layered over the top.

The trees behind them rustle when a sudden breeze picks up and sweeps through the cove, the slight gust only enough to send a few dried leaves skirting across the sand. Donghyuck’s shirt billows out behind him like a cape and Mark's own presses flush against his torso. In the blink of an eye, a flash of light appears before them, manifesting and hovering just above the tiny waves. Beams of every color within the light spectrum branch out from the orb and down towards the water, the platform growing wider the closer it gets to its surface. Though difficult to see because of the blinding light, two figures of similar height and stature appear while bathed in the beams of color. The orb pulses slightly before disappearing just and quickly as it had arrived.

 _This_ is what they were waiting for. Or rather, _whom_.

Without the light now streaming onto his face, Mark is able to see the figures more clearly. Dressed in all white, the pair of them are stood in the water, the pristine blue lapping at their shins. Anywhere the water touches fails to dampen their clothes. There's a blonde boy, sporting a bowl cut and puppy dog eyes. His white long sleeved shirt is much fancier than his companion's: two shiny gold chains loop from either shoulder, meeting in the middle where they are joined by a broach. Mark is too far away to see exactly what the broach is but he can tell that there is a complicated insignia engraved into the gold.

Behind the blonde boy, sprouting from his shoulders and massive enough for the tips of them to be dipped in the water, are a powerful set of white wings. The feathers are pristine and the entirety of them sway in the slight sea breeze.

Beside the winged creature is a teenaged boy, his hair and bangs are a dark onyx to match his curious eyes. Eyes that were trained on the pair of them above a hesitant smile.

Lee Jeno, and beside him, his guardian angel.

Somehow – Donghyuck had initially speculated that Taeyong might have had a hand in it – the brunette had been granted council with a lost soul from his past, given the one condition that Jeno's guardian be present to assist him with the journey over and back. It helped too, that word spreads fast upstairs and in the underworld alike, so many Angels and council members had been intrigued by the story of a demon turned human.

There's a pause, when seemingly all parties are unsure how to continue, but the tension is released the second the angel raises one of his massive wings to nudge Jeno gently. The boy throws a hesitant glance at the angel before rushing forward through the water with a grin.

Donghyuck is gone from beside Mark in an instant, the pair of them meeting as the water turns to sand with a massive hug. Mark knows Donghyuck is probably crying already and averts his gaze to give them some privacy. He casts his attention toward his shoes as a small sand crab scuttles by his feet.

To his understanding, the pair of teenagers he sees right now would change depending on the viewer. To Donghyuck, Jeno is likely a ten year old boy because that was his last memory of him. To others, the pair of them might just be two lively kids sitting on a distant beach somewhere discussing years gone by.

The pair of them settle on the sand, Donghyuck's back is to Mark as they talk quietly amongst themselves. Mark hopes like crazy that Donghyuck will tell Jeno of the clinic he has started up: a sexual abuse recovery center for youths to help them deal with and recover from their trauma. Donghyuck had came to Mark with the idea about a year ago, and with a little help from various contacts it looks like soon Donghyuck will become the youth ambassador and chief counselor once he finishes his youth work course.

This was the biggest closure Donghyuck could have ever asked for on his own journey; and the powers that be are likely to allow he and Jeno to see one another regularly.

Mark looks to them just as Donghyuck turns to regard him. The former's eyes widen when the pair of them haul themselves upright and begin to walk over to where he is standing awkwardly.

The blonde boy is unsure if he's allowed to talk to Jeno, too. With a panicked glance he looks over to the Angel, who offers him no answer. He still hadn’t figured it out by the time they had reached him, Donghyuck starting at him with fondness and Jeno offering him a friendly smile. In a state of panic, Mark holds out his hand awkwardly, attempting to offer Jeno a handshake. The dark haired boy bypasses his hand completely, pulling Mark's stiff form into a hug. The embrace immediately washes all of Mark's worry away and he returns it gratefully. Though he isn't much for skin-ship, something about the boy’s entire aura is calming.

Jeno pulls back, his eyes forming little crescent moons above an understanding smile. Mark finds himself returning it.

“Thank you for looking after him well,” Jeno's voice is low and smooth, his gratitude evident in his tone. Mark knows he's referring to Donghyuck, be it that he has seen it from upstairs or Donghyuck had told him about their time together. He wants to correct him by saying that they had _both_ looked after one another, but his chest wells with an overwhelming sense of pride as he nods graciously.

“Time to go, Jeno-ssi,” the angel calls to him, the brilliant white orb returning and hovering above the waves.

“Okay, Jungwoo-hyung,” Jeno shoots back, turning around to give Mark and Donghyuck an apologetic look. The brunette surges forward, capturing him in an embrace once more before opening his arm to invite Mark into a group hug. The latter rolls his eyes playfully and the three of them hug one last time before Jeno strides back down to the water's edge. Donghyuck sniffles next to Mark and the blonde has his arm around him immediately, the former demon leaning into his side as Jeno gives them a tiny parting wave, disappearing into the blinding colors.

As the orb is about to disappear again, Mark has a fleeting thought.

“Hey,” he prompts gently, Donghyuck lifts his eyes to meet his own. “Did Jeno ever get his cats?”

This brings Mark's favorite kind of smile into Donghyuck's features, he looks out to the now vacant cove once more. “They have plenty of cats where he's going, now.”

♤♡◇♧

Suffice to say Mark Lee's life has changed in leaps and bounds. Expect, maybe, he still gets spooked by mice in dingy closets. But all in all now when he's asked by strangers, his mom or his grandma at family functions what he does for a living he can safely tell them:

He is Mark Lee, graduate, boyfriend to a former demon, and professional ghost hunter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading ahhhh!!
> 
> I hope my dumb fic made you happy at least a little bit - sorry it was kinda trash. :/ I never expected this to be seen by so many people so I cannot thank you guys enough for taking the time to read, comment and give Kudos. Y’all deserve the world.


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